News Release

Vancouver – The B.C. Securities Commission has settled with a former company director who admitted to creating a misleading appearance of trading activity through wash trades in company shares.

Timothy Britton Brock has agreed to pay the commission $20,000 and he has been barred from trading for six years except for his personal account. Under the settlement, he is also prohibited from being a director or officer of any public company for five years.

Brock, who was a director in Tree Brewing Co. Ltd., Great Western Minerals Group Ltd. and War Eagle Mining Co. Inc., admitted that between Nov. 1, 1997 and Nov. 30, 2000, he participated in 37 separate trades in the shares of the three companies in which he was, at the same time, the buyer and the seller (a practice known as wash trading).

By doing so, Brock created the misleading appearance of trading activity in the companies’ shares, in contravention of the securities legislation.

The wash trades made up the following percentages of trading volumes:
· 4.6 per cent of the trading volume of Great Western between Nov. 1, 1997 and Nov. 30, 2000;
· 1.5 per cent of the trading volume of War Eagle between Nov. 1, 1997 and Nov. 30, 2000; and
· 14 per cent of the trading volume of Tree Brewing between March 6, 1998 and April 16, 1999.

Brock also failed to file insider reports for 414 trades in the shares of these companies.

In mitigating the sanctions that otherwise would have applied to Brock for his breaches of the Securities Act, the Executive Director took into account that Brock did not profit from the trades and that the wash trades did not appear to have affected share prices.

The B.C. Securities Commission is the independent provincial government agency responsible for regulating trading in securities in the province. Copies of the settlement can be viewed in the documents database of the commission’s website www.bcsc.bc.ca or by contacting Andrew Poon, Media Relations, 604-899-6880.