Between 1992 and 1994 the Company traded physical
commodities, mainly beer, from Canada and the United States of America to Eastern European
and Former Soviet Union countries. This trade was conducted under the protection of
exclusive marketing agreements. In 1993 we allege that one Canadian supplier breached their
agreements with us and circumvented us to our customers. In 1994 a legal claim was served
against that supplier in the Ontario Court of Justice (General Division). The legal action
proceeded normally to 'discovery', completing 'oral examinations for discovery' in 1996.
However, the claim was prevented from progressing further. The case was paralysed by a
broad range of further breaches against SIASI between 1995 and 2003. We were diverted by
legal attacks against the Company on two other continents (Africa and Europe). Eventually
we were forced to examine the activity of our former Toronto legal representatives who had
been our solicitors for the 1994 claim. Between SIASI's former lawyers, the defence lawyers
and some third parties, the original claim had been allowed to be dismissed from the Ontario
Court of Justice in 2001. Astonishingly this case dismissal was executed without any
notification to SIASI, its directors, its shareholders or its authorised officers whatsoever!
This has inevitably led to a second legal claim, that was served in 2005 and which is being
heard by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. This second claim deals with alleged
wrongdoing by SIASI's original legal representatives and then revisits the facts of the
original 1994 claim as a 'case within a case'. SIASI has now been engaged in an effort to
obtain justice in Ontario for seventeen years.
