While it is clear that it's a rather mature and honorable act to provide statements to shareholders after all that has happened, the statements themselves leave a lot to be desired, in my opinion.
First of all, I want to make it absolutely clear that in my opinion, the sting operation and the timing of the events thereafter by the powers that be seemed quite suspicious and fishy, as if there were forces actively against this company and its management. I think that the ex-CEO was nailed on some kind of obscure technicality and was likely just a head on the wall for the SEC task force and so was targeted. I think most struggling micro cap CEO's would jump at any kind of funding if it made itself available, regardless of the details and of course some like the ex-CEO obviously went just over the line as far as the SEC regulations are concerned; whether there was full knowledge and awareness of the regulations being circumvented or not is unknown but in my opinion it was a trap set by the powers that be of whom were actively seeking a way in which to destroy this company.
That being said, as a long term shareholder, even though I understand the unfortunate circumstances which transpired, none of it really fixes things for the normal investor who did in fact put money into this company by investing via buying and holding common shares. I personally take offense at the notion that public shareholders who own common shares are "not Investors". Wrong. Common shareholders ARE indeed Investors and we did in fact invest quite a few pennies into the company SFIO! I refuse to sit idly by and allow someone to tell me and other shareholders that we common shareholders did not invest or put any money into the company, we did! And what did we get for our loyalty and honorable investment into a company we thought would grow and accomplish great things? 90%+ losses and a locked stock, seemingly because an ex-CEO knowingly or unknowingly did not follow proper SEC regulations while raising funds for the company. Shareholders have been completely decimated and to no fault of their own. Most bought shares from mid May to late June, many on July 1 2011 and in afterhours on July 1 2011, the stock was globally locked, for some unknown reason, we still are not yet aware of, and to this day common holders are stuck and are not able to have access to their funds (no liquidity) in order to buy or sell. Shareholders here are the victims and it is outrageous for the ex-CEO to suggest that loyal shareholders never invested "1 penny in the company"!!
Furthermore, "all money and time" that was invested by the ex-CEO was handsomely rewarded with payments from the sale of common stock. The ex-CEO received 100M shares based on the Euro patent portfolio, and along with the already held 100M shares (issued to him prior), the total of 200M shares were owned by the ex-CEO. As of Sept 30 2011, the ex-CEO owns approximately 64M shares, therefore 136M common shares were sold over a roughly two year period. There is no way for any of us to know how much MONEY in proceeds those stock sales equated to, but we can imagine it likely paid for a decent salary and expenses. Even assuming all shares were sold at par value, $0.001, that would still be close to about $70,000 per year. I think it is rather audacious for the ex-CEO to complain about the "personal" investment in "cash" that was made by him, when really those shares were sold to the public and so that "cash" came from common shareholders via their investments into the company. We do not know who we got our shares from, brokerages or who knows who, that is the issue right now, it seems brokerages sold all of us air shares, phony IOUs, however we do know that over time the ex-CEOs personal position went from 200M shares to 64M shares, therefore stating that "you got your Shares from some Brokerage not from me" is actually entirely false. This also makes item #6, false, "...nothing is sold!". It seems item #7 is accurate though, "there a lot of false statements made her Guys".
We realize the global lock is time consuming and likely costly because of lawyer expenses and fees in dealing with the DTCC. However, there should be monies available via the Denverson subsidiary sale allegedly for $1.1M but for over a year now we shareholders have heard nothing about it. Item #1 is true enough, the ex-CEO is "...not responsible for action G.R. is doing or not on behalf of SFIO". Common shareholders OWN this company, that's how it works, that's how public companies work, the shareholders own the company, collectively, not management. If the current CEO is not capable of running the company then perhaps he should resign and let someone else work to try to bring the company back to life. No common shareholder ever voted in the current CEO in the first place, yet by way of a very questionable share issuance to himself on July 1 2011, the day of the lock, he owns 1M pref shares which are defined via the by-laws to effectively have full voting power over the common shares. The real question shareholders need to be asking is : Has the company, who is supposed to be owned fully by common shareholders been hijacked and taken over by the current CEO?
My last thought on the matter is in regards to item #4. Yes, while the statements made are true, it is also true that real public retail common shareholders ALSO DID the ex-CEOs TIME ALONG WITH HIM; in the going on two year global lock of this stock. Effectively shareholders are in lock-up as well, seemingly because of an illegal "mistake" the ex-CEO commited. In my opinion, I think those who caused all of these "troubled waters" for investors along with the current CEO have a fiduciary duty to bring shareholder value, not to mention a moral responsiblity in at least trying to resolve all the numerous outstanding issues with the company and stock simply because shareholders by way of investing for years and years, made it possible for this company to even make an attempt at success. I think there is a serious lack of respect here for the public common shareholder. We get kicked by crony hedge funds and brokerages selling half the float worth of phantom shares (which force a global lock on the stock) and now we get to have our loyalty to the company rewarded by getting chewed out by the ex-CEO who by his "mistake" has caused massive losses to shareholders? It's wrong. It's an outrage and it's shameful. What has happened to shareholders here is a travesty and should be getting rectified by all of those involved as soon as possible, but this it seems is not happening. It seems those responsible are too eager to continue to fish for further monies by decimated shareholders and look to place blame on everything and everyone besides themselves.
I will not respond to any comments in reply to this post.
Do or do not, there is no try.
-($$) <== $SFIO <== +$$$$$
