The Ontario government recently provided funding to mining exploration companies called Griftco Corp. and Money Money Money.
The Ontario Junior Exploration Program (OJEP) allocates taxpayer funds to junior mining companies for exploration projects. Under the program, companies can apply to receive up to $200,000 per mining project, and up to $10,000 for supporting Indigenous employment.
One of the roughly 100 companies to receive funding under OJEP last year was a privately held exploration-stage mining company called Griftco. It received $66,035.
The word “grift” means to engage in petty or small-scale swindling. The Canadian mining industry has a reputation for swindling investors, most notably the late 1990s Bre-X Minerals Ltd. scam, which resulted in the loss of roughly $6-billion of investor capital when it was revealed that the company’s massive gold discovery in Indonesia was a hoax.
Bay street lawyer Chris Irwin is one of the principals behind Griftco. In an interview, he said the name has a perfectly innocent explanation, has nothing to do with ripping people off, and was inspired by a funny acquaintance.
“I had a friend called Alastair Griffin, who had a phone message that when you called, it said, ‘Thank you for reaching Griftco, all our agents are busy,’ ” he said. “We sort of had a running joke about that, and then I said, ‘I’m going to steal the name,’ so I incorporated the company and now I have the name.”
Griftco didn’t start out as a mining company, but as a shell. Around 2008, Griftco bought the Butt minerals exploration property in the Nipissing district in northeastern Ontario, where uranium was discovered in the early 1900s. Mr. Irwin says he has put a lot of his own personal money into the property over the years.
Mr. Irwin, who works for Toronto-based boutique law firm Irwin Lowy LLP, has worked a securities lawyer for the junior mining sector since the late 1990s. One of his areas of expertise is helping private companies go public using shell structures and reverse takeovers. Through that work, he has served as an officer or board member with numerous mining exploration companies over the years, including Trelawney Mining and Exploration Inc., which was acquired by Iamgold Corp. for $600-million in 2012.
Griftco itself has done several transactions with various counterparties in recent years, including an options agreement with Latin American Minerals Inc. in 2018 and another options deal with Canoe Mining Ventures Corp. in 2022.
Mr. Irwin says that nobody at those companies ever raised concerns about the optics of doing a deal with Griftco.
“It’s probably my reputation that people know it’s ironic,” he said through spurts of laughter.
The Ontario government didn’t raise concerns about the Griftco name when it applied for funding for the Butt property under OJEP last year, Mr. Irwin said.
George Pirie, Ontario’s Minister of Mines, declined to comment.
Another curiously named company to receive money under the Ontario funding program in 2023 for junior miners was Money Money Money, a privately held entity based in Wawa. It received $27,494. According to the Ontario Business Registry, Money Money Money was registered last year by prospector James Rastel. Mr. Rastel could not be reached for comment.
As it is a private company, there is very little public information about Money Money Money.
To apply for funding under Ontario’s program, companies must be worth less than $100-million, provide proof they have the wherewithal to pay for 100 per cent of the project’s costs and hold the appropriate permits for exploration.
With a report by Stephanie Chambers.