North Springs Resources Corporation’s president Harry Lappa says that his company has acquired the mineral rights to properties in Guyana through agreements with several private parties and not the government but there are growing questions in the Canadian media about its announcements.
Lappa’s statement followed a news release by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment which said that the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) is not aware of a company called North Springs Resources Corporation (NSRC) doing business in Guyana with respect to mining or mineral properties.
“North Springs Resources Corporation has not contacted nor informed the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission of any joint-venture of any Letter of Intent with any Mining Company or Mineral tenure in Guyana,” the ministry had said in a statement two Fridays ago in responding to an article on the Market Watch website in which NSRC claimed it has “reached an agreement in principle to acquire a 100% interest in two prospecting licences in the prolific gold producing region known as the Kabouri Gold Mining Area in the country of Guyana.”
Lappa, in a letter to the Kaieteur News yesterday said that his company “has acquired the mineral rights to these properties by agreements with private parties who have themselves concluded underlying agreements with the formal titleholders for the properties; not the Government of Guyana…”
Online reports said that after the announcement of the Letter of Intent, shares in NSRC rose. However, the credentials of Lappa have come under scrutiny. The Canadian Leader-Post in its online edition last week under the headline “Who is Regina’s Harry Lappa?’ noted the widespread interest in him.
The report pointed out that the website stockhouse.com said last Thursday that Lappa had 500 million shares in North Springs Resources, which had a capitalization of Cdn$378.6 million, based on that day’s average price for the over-the-counter stock and called him “a paper millionaire”.
The report said that Lappa is listed on the website of NSRC as its president, CEO, chief financial officer and sole director. The site also has biography of Lappa, who is identified as the holder of a 1988 bachelor of business administration degree from the University of Regina; a Henderson’s Directory from that year lists a person by that name as a student. The North Springs website says Lappa has, “over 25 years of senior management experience within the provincial and federal government sectors, and as an effective chief executive involved with several public and private companies”, adding that from 1985 to 1989, Lappa “was a Financial Officer with Employment and Immigration Canada”.
Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the U.S. indicate a man with that name was a director of Iciena Ventures from 2004-07, then its vice-president and chief financial officer. “In 2008, Mr. Lappa became President of Iciena Ventures, which is a publicly traded diamond exploration company operating primarily in Brazil,” said the filing, adding, “In February 2009, Mr. Lappa has been Director of Endeavour Power Corp. a public oil and gas company.”
The article noted that on the website of NSRC on Friday were announcements — all made within only four working days earlier this month — that North Springs planned to take financial stakes in gold projects in Arizona, Nevada and the South American country of Guyana, though all links led to the same news release, on Arizona. On Friday, a link from the Bloomberg News website led to a North Springs news release of a notice of intent to acquire an interest in a gold mine in Ghana.
“It’s a remarkable flurry of activity for a company that, by its own admission — in an Oct. 31, 2010 filing with the SEC — had only Cdn$16 in cash, liabilities of Cdn$108,700 and stock with a par value of one cent per share,” the Leader-Post said.
The website of Forbes magazine showed North Springs Resources’ stock trading at 56 cents per share early Friday afternoon, giving a capitalization of Cdn$386 million — yet with no income in the last two quarters of 2011 and only Cdn$11,000 in income in the year’s second quarter, the report said.
