OSC hands out bans, $5 million in sanctions for fraud

The Ontario Securities Commission has handed down more than $5 million in sanctions and permanently banned two former executives.

In its reason and decision released Wednesday, the OSC announced the sanctions against Miklos Nagy and Tony Sanfelice, and the three companies they controlled—Quadrexx Asset Management, Quadrexx Hedge Capital Management and Quadrexx Secured Assets.

Last February, the OSC found they had engaged in fraudulent conduct related to three distributions of securities, and that Nagy and Sanfelice had committed several other contraventions of Ontario securities law.

The OSC’s sanctions include a permanent ban from trading or acquiring securities for Nagy and Sanfelice, as well as:

administrative penalties of $600,000 for each of them, and of $300,000 for Quadrexx Hedge Capital Management;
a joint disgorgement of $2,495,277 for Nagy and Sanfelice, as well as individual disgorgement of $482,660.67 for Nagy and $323,382.28 for Sanfelice;
other costs to the OSC totalling $600,000.

According to the decision, the respondents said they intend to appeal while accepting the commission’s findings. “However, they asked that the sanctions not be based on ‘the label’ of fraud that Staff and the Commission chose to attach to their conduct, but on their motives, intentions, knowledge and beliefs when they engaged in the conduct,” the document said.

Responded the OSC: “The Commission’s findings of multiple frauds cannot be dismissed as mere ‘labels’ or disregarded.”

Read the full reasons and decision document here.

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