R.C. Morris Capital Management Ltd., a Vancouver-based private lender that backed Gary Ng’s failed spate of wealth-manager acquisitions, has taken extraordinary legal and strategic steps to avoid being publicly identified as one of the financiers taken in by Mr. Ng’s alleged falsified-collateral scheme.
The asset manager, which has promoted itself as a special situations investor, was one of four lenders backing Mr. Ng’s acquisition spree of independent wealth management companies between 2018 and 2020. The company lent Mr. Ng $60-million – $20-million of which he paid back – to back his 2018 acquisition of PI Financial, the Vancouver-based investment advisory firm.
Records filed in court as part of that police investigation show that R.C. Morris tried to get the Mounties to agree to strict terms as a condition of the company’s co-operation with their investigation. These included R.C. Morris having input on the RCMP’s media strategy, as well as a publication ban on any criminal charges that might be laid against Mr. Ng. When the Mounties concluded that they could not abide by those terms, R.C. Morris officials withdrew from an interview scheduled for Nov.
Mr. Kapoor’s letter does not mention that, by that point, R.C. Morris had already been identified in a Globe news article as one of the lenders allegedly defrauded by Mr. Ng – and that the company’s relationship with Mr. Ng was clearly spelled out in other public records. Shortly after the fraud came to light, an R.C. Morris subsidiary placed liens on seven of Mr. Ng’s vehicles, including a 2017 Lamborghini Huracan Spyder.
When The Globe accessed the records late last month and sought comment from R.C. Morris’s managing partner, Christopher Morris, the company’s lawyers moved quickly and obtained the emergency hearing.