Perth office link to the tale of gold and guns
June 3, 2008
"LOCATION, location, location," is the mantra of property investors around the world. For West Australian mining hopefuls, you don't get a better real estate location than 34 Parliament Place, West Perth.
The building, once owned by the WA Government, is a stone's throw from Parliament House. It's a cosy and tangled little group that does business behind the high security walls at the property.
One company based there is Range Resources, the
small-cap oil and mineral explorer that is drilling for oil in Puntland, Somalia.
Range Resources has come across Full Disclosure's radar before, in the aftermath of the collapse of Opes Prime.
Melbourne day trader and GT Falcon collector Leo Khouri, who lost tens of millions of dollars worth of shares in the collapse of Opes Prime, is a shareholder and consultant to the company.
Range Resources' executive director is Peter Landau, formerly of Melbourne. Landau's private company, Lacka Consulting, has its offices at 34 Parliament Place.
A lot of hiring must be done around the water cooler, because Lacka has a good track record of its staff becoming the company secretaries of other listed companies that work out of the building.
Former Range Resources company secretary Joanna Kiernan worked for Lacka before she departed the country. Lacka employee Jane Flegg is the joint company secretary of another listed mining explorer based at 34 Parliament Place - Contact Uranium.
It's interesting to note that Flegg is part-owner of a private company called Thirteen Eleven Pty Ltd, which is registered to 34 Parliament Place. Before she left Range Resources, Kiernan was also a part-owner of Thirteen Eleven. In December, Thirteen Eleven was one of the top 20 shareholders of another listed company called Continental Capital, with 1.975 million shares, or 1.24%, of the stock on issue.
Sure enough, Continental Capital operates out of 34 Parliament Place, and Peter Landau is the executive chairman.
Khouri's private super fund, Bejjal Super, was listed as owning 6.2 million Continental Capital shares in December.
Listed mineral explorer Artemis Resources is another company operating out of 34 Parliament Place.
Back on March 31, Continental Capital announced that Contract Uranium became a substantial shareholder in Artemis - you'll find the signatures of Flegg and Artemis director Barry Woodhouse on the documents filed with the ASX.