Edmonton's William Grosvenor, posing as NEMO <
brianlam...@excite.com> wrote in
news:bfo4p8tvc8vcrm01l...@4ax.com:
"Master of Malice: The Ghermezians put an end to Bill
Grosvenor's 'news tips'"
Alberta Report, July 3, 1989
The Ghermezians backed their application for the gag order with
stories from Alberta Report and the West German newspaper Die
Zeit. Alberta Report has also obtained numerous letters, court
documents, newspaper articles - even Grosvenor's own resume -
dating back to 1970, revealing that Grosvenor, 48, has a
criminal record for assault and extortion, that he was diagnosed
at Riverview Psychiatric Hospital in British Columbia in 1973 as
suffering from a paranoid personality disorder, and that his
harassment of the Ghermezians is only the latest in a 20-year
series of vendettas against corporations and individuals,
including leading figures of the British Columbia legislature
and judiciary. The documents also reveal a remarkable
willingness on the part of some newspapers to accept Grosvenor
at face value. The Edmonton Journal, in particular, has
described him over the years as a "consultant," an "import-
export consultant" and "president of an international management
consulting firm," lending Grosvenor a credibility which his
history shows is not deserved.
William David Michael Grosvenor's career as a self-described
opponent of graft and corruption began shortly after he arrived
in Toronto (he says from England) in the mid-1960s, and it got
off to an inauspicious start. According to a Vancouver Sun story
about Grosvenor in July 1970, Grosvenor was fined $50 in April
1967 for assaulting a security guard who was attempting to eject
him from a bank he was picketing over alleged "irregularity." At
about the same time, Grosvenor claimed credit for uncovering
wrongdoing in the affairs of Prudential Finance Corp., an
Ontario company that collapsed owing creditors $20 million. But
then-Finance minister Mitchell Sharp told parliament that
Grosvenor had "revealed nothing of value." Indeed, Mr. Sharp
believed that Grosvenor, who describes himself in his resume as
"a registered expert on fraudulent bankruptcies with the RCMP,"
had probably been fired by Prudential's auditors. In 1968, after
a brief stint with an accounting firm in Halifax (where he
changed his name from Gruber), Grosvenor left for Prince Rupert,
B.C., where he found work with accountant Odd Eidsvik. A source
claims Mr. Eidsvik soon became disenchanted with Grosvenor's
work and cut his pay in half.
It was while living in Prince Rupert that Grosvenor discovered a
new avenue for pursuing his many grievances: the courts. In
February 1970, Grosvenor charged Prince Rupert MLA William
Murray and provincial court Judge W.N. Poole under the B.C.
Companies Act with failing to file an annual return for
companies of which he claimed they were directors. A district
judge promptly threw out the charges, noting that Grosvenor had
failed to make even a prima facie case that Mr. Murray and Judge
Poole were directors of the companies in question - but not
before the story was picked up and prominently displayed by the
Vancouver Province, which printed the news of the charges
without comment. At about the same time, Grosvenor charged the
local Bank of Montreal with forgery. Again the case was
dismissed, with Judge J.T. Harvey labelling Grosvenor a "master
of malice" for bringing an action against a bank that had
intended only to spare him the embarrassment of having a cheque
bounce.
All told, Grosvenor brought seven court cases in less than a
year while living in Prince Rupert. Four never got to trial, two
were dismissed and one ended with Grosvenor being ordered to pay
a counter-claim larger than the amount owed him. In July 1970,
Mr. Justice A.B. Macfarlane of the B.C. Supreme Court invoked a
law designed to prevent abuse of the courts to prohibit
Grosvenor from instituting any new legal proceedings in the
province without the permission of a court. In the meantime,
Grosvenor himself had faced charges. In April 1970 he was
convicted of attempting to extort $50 from Prince Rupert
businessman Campbell McLeod by threatening to prosecute him
under the B.C. Companies Act. He was sentenced to one day in
jail and fined $400.
Shortly thereafter Grosvenor moved to suburban Vancouver, where
he found a new target in General Motors Canada Ltd. (GM),
manufacturers of the problem-plagued Firenza. In May 1973 he and
a woman named Hendrika Peeters, with whom he shared a New
Westminster address, stationed themselves outside a Vancouver GM
dealership and attempted to steer potential customers to another
GM dealership a few blocks away. "It is utterly incredible to
me," said Mr. Justice A.A. Mackoff of the B.C. Supreme Court in
issuing an injunction barring Grosvenor from the site, "that a
group saying it seeks to relay information about General Motors
should have the temerity to say this GM dealer is a good guy and
the other GM dealer, who sells the same products they labelled
as junk, is a bad guy." Throughout the affair, Grosvenor passed
himself off as the B.C. representative of the respected
Automobile Protection Association (APA), prompting APA president
Phil Edmonston to ask B.C.'s attorney- general to investigate
whether Grosvenor had been "soliciting money or carrying out
other undesirable activities in our name."
Grosvenor dropped out of sight during the mid-1970s, during
which time he claims to have been a consultant, "processed for
top secret and military security clearance," to the prime
minister of Malaysia. In 1980 he surfaced in Edmonton where he
threatened to sue the city for $200 when a tent belonging to a
Malaysian cultural group with which he was associated blew down
in a storm during the city's Heritage Days festival. In February
1980, he also gained attention when he apologized to the Iranian
Embassy for Canada's role in spiriting six U.S. diplomats out of
Tehran in the days following the Islamic revolution. Grosvenor
called the assistance given to the diplomats by Kenneth Taylor,
Canada's ambassador to Iran, a "criminal act" intended to aid
U.S. "spies."
In the intervening years, Grosvenor has waged an unceasing
campaign intended, in his words "to put the Ghermezians out of
business." After returning from West Germany last week,
Grosvenor was holed up in his home in Edmonton's Dickinsfield
neighbourhood, reportedly refusing service of the Triple Five
gag order. The company's lawyers were preparing to go to court
again Monday morning for an order allowing them to nail the
injunction to the door of Grosvenor's home, which is in fact
owned by his wife, Sario. Grosvenor could also face extortion
charges in connection with his campaign against the Ghermezians.
According to a $22-million lawsuit filed against him by the
family, Grosvenor told a Ghermezian associate that a payment of
$1.2 million would leave him "too busy to continue his
harassment of the plaintiffs for at least three year." The
Ghermezians intend to keep him quiet for a lot longer than that.
--
http://tinyurl.com/GROSVENORPRESS My Ugly Self
http://tinyurl.com/GROSVENORSUCKS My Court Shellacking
http://tinyurl.com/GROSVENORLEGAL My Shameful Legal History