A man who was given a lifetime ban from financial markets by a B.C. regulator in 2017 has pleaded guilty to breaching the ban. Marcel Anil Rada was sentenced Wednesday in North Vancouver provincial court for breaching an order of the B.C. Securities Commission, according to a statement issued by the regulator Friday. The 60-year-old was charged last year with two counts of contravening B.C.’s Securities Act. Online court records indicate one of the two counts was stayed after his guilty plea. Rada was sentenced to a $5,000 fine plus a 15-per-cent victim surcharge of $750, according to the BCSC, which said payment is due Aug. 31. The charges could have resulted in “fines, imprisonment, probation and/or restitution orders,” the regulator said when it announced the charges last year. The charges stemmed from Rada acting as “a director and/or officer” of a B.C. numbered company and another company, Goldfinger Investments Ltd., between 2017 and 2025, the BCSC said. “In sentencing Rada, the judge said it was beneficial that Rada pleaded guilty early during the process and noted that the public was not harmed because Rada was the sole shareholder of the two companies,” the BCSC statement reads. “The companies have both since been dissolved.” A BCSC panel permanently banned Rada from becoming or acting as a director or officer of any issuer in 2017. The ban was imposed based on a 2011 decision by the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, now known as the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization. In that decision, the organization accepted a settlement with Rada in which he admitted to a variety of misconduct. Rada admitted that he had raised $205,000 from people who were looking to invest in two different issuers of securities, without disclosing that the issuers would pay nearly all of this money—some $175,000—to Rada. He also admitted to “facilitating participation in off-book transactions without the knowledge and consent of his employer;” issuing a cheque to repay a loan to an issuer from an account that he knew or ought to have known had been closed two months earlier; and failing to co-operate with the IIROC’s investigative staff. For this misconduct, he agreed to pay a $75,000 fine and $10,000 in costs, and to be permanently banned from reapproval by the IIROC in any capacity. The BCSC imposed its prohibitions on Rada under a section of the Securities Act that allows it to recognize decisions from other regulatory bodies. The ban was intended to “protect investors and the capital markets in British Columbia,” according to the BCSC decision.
