(April 13, 2023). The Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Honourable E.M. Morgan, issued a direction that he will refrain from further motion practice so the representative investors in the 4 Canadian class actions can prepare to resolve all the claims on behalf of all investors that purchased Wayland Group Corp.’s securities in offerings from 2017 and 2018, as well as in the open market.
Wayland Group Corp. was previously known as Maricann Group Corp. Wayland’s former officers Scott Langille, Gerhard Muller, Paul Pathak (who is also the founder of Canaccord Genuity G Ventures Corp.), Eric Silver, Michael Stein, and Benjamin Ward (who has been charged with securities fraud by the Ontario Securities Commission relating his prior company) are the identified defendants. Canaccord Genuity Corp. served as one of Wayland’s investment banks that sold its securities.
Albert Pelletier and Andrew Morganti are acting as lead counsel on behalf of the investors. Defendants Wayland Group Corp. and Benjamin Ward are in default status.
“It was incredible to receive over 400 inquiries from Canadian and European investors to help them recover their investment during COVID and I was not even allowed into Canada because of COVID travel restrictions because the regulators did not answer their calls; the Canadian stock exchanges were still open during COVID but no protection. It is disappointing that we still have not received a single call or a responding email from the Canadian regulators asking about what we discovered.” Mr. Morganti was quoted as saying. “We don’t have governmental bureaucracy, are not seeking ‘votes’ and we are not intimidated by insurance companies.”
On February 28, 2018, Wayland announced that it “retained Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP to act as its independent legal counsel in connection with these matters” but reported to investors, “The Company is unaware of any facts that could reasonably lead it to conclude that this investigation has had, or will have, any impact on the ability of Mr. Ward to property and effectively carry out his duties as CEO or director of the Company.” In response to the News Release, Mr. Pelletier responded with a simple, “… wait; from February 2018, until April 2019, the Board, Special Committee, and its lawyers never were made aware of any activity that would question the CEO’s actions? How do you explain that to investors after what happened?“
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