Benoît Laliberté

Benoît Laliberté (born July 18, 1972) is a Canadian entrepreneur and inventor and is currently a Senior Member of Investel Capital Corporation.

He started his own business called Jitec in 1986 at the age of fourteen, building computer systems in his basement for friends and family.

He dropped out of college to work full-time on JITEC.

After working at JITEC for several years as sole proprietorship, he incorporated the company in 1992 and began to sell computers, software and related components in Canada.

In 1994, Laliberté created Vectoria Inc., a portfolio of companies involved in software, information technology, and telecommunications.

In conjunction with Vectoria, JITEC created the first electronic virus immune computer using its Electronic Virus Activity Control (EVAC) technology.

EVAC was built into computer servers to immediately detect and prevent viruses.

By 1996, JITEC had CDN$7 million in annual sales and 45 employees.

This led to him winning the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).

In 1997, Laliberté created Windows Based Intelligent Terminals (WINBIT) and POWERVEC servers.

He worked with Microsoft to develop the first generation of cloud computing services.

He is the founder of JITEC, Vectoria Inc., TeliPhone Corp., and the New York Telecom Exchange Inc. Earlier in his career, Laliberté gained some notoriety in Quebec with JITEC, a public company which at its peak in 2000 had an estimated value of $CDN575 million.

More recently, he invented several technologies in telecommunications, social media, and information technology (IT).

Benoît Laliberté was born in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Québec, Canada.

In July 2000, JITEC was listed on the Montreal Stock Exchange after a successful IPO.

At this point, Laliberté's personal net worth was in excess of $345 million.

JITEC was growing rapidly; its stock had jumped from CDN$3.80 in late July 2000 to CDN$11.65 in only a few weeks.

This sudden success caught the attention of many, including multi-millionaire Herbert Black, who then became a friend and advisor to Laliberté.

However, unbeknownst to Laliberté, Black had a well established history of profiting from the short selling of companies' stocks.

Soon after becoming involved with Laliberté, Black allegedly began this process with JITEC.

He reported Laliberté to the Quebec Security Commission (QSC) and accused him of insider trading and irregular transactions.

He put immense pressure on the QSC to have a cease trade order issued against JITEC, which triggered an investigation.

Meanwhile, JITEC stock was falling rapidly based on leaked information to the media.

On Nov 10th, 2000, Paul Trudeau, principal investigator for the QSC in the case signed an affidavit required for the QSC to issue a personal cease trade order on Laliberté and an investigation was initiated.

This resulted in his forced resignation as CEO the following day, the same day that Black had initiated a class action suit against JITEC, CIBC, Canaccord, and Laliberté himself for losses incurred with the drop in share price.

However, at the same time Black was shorting the stock at $10 thereby benefitting from the stock's drop.

A small article in the Journal de Montréal in 2002 reported that Paul Trudeau, the QSC investigator, was reinstated after being arrested and subsequently fired for receiving a bribe of $1,000 from Herbert Black in 2000.

Black, who had not disclosed to Trudeau the personal interests he had in the fall of the stock price, was revealed to have shorted the stock of JITEC through insider trading with privileged information.

When this was brought to the attention of Laliberté, he immediately filed a lawsuit against the QSC for a record-breaking $127 million in November 2003 on the basis that the QSC was complacent with Black in the demise of JITEC.

It was later revealed that Laurent Lemieux, another senior QSC investigator involved in the JITEC case had leaked information on the investigation to the press and was also fired.

In what some have viewed as retaliatory, subsequent to Laliberté launching the lawsuit the QSC initiated actions on securities infractions.

The entire affair has been widely reported in Canadian media.

He had apparently manipulated the Commission des Valeurs Mobilières du Québec (CVMQ- now the Authorité des Marchés Financiers, AMF) in hopes of profiting from the downfall of the JITEC stock: he was short selling stocks while informing other investors of alleged irregularities in order to decrease its price (Black had been previously linked to a Commodity Futures Trading Commission lawyer and investigator, Dennis O'Keefe who was disbarred in 2005 based on conflict of interest charges from his 1995 investigation of Sumitomo Corp. for copper price fixing which resulted in a $150 million settlement in 1998).

Black denied these allegations.

In 2011, after conducting an extensive investigation, the CIBC filed as part of its defence, that Black himself alone was responsible for the drop in share price.

On September 23, 2013, the Montreal newspaper La Presse published an article on Laliberté, which chronicled his business life since 2000.

In October 2014 the case was settled for 9.85 million.

A court-appointed claims administrator is currently in the process of dealing with all claims in the matter.

Laliberté still owe more than 56 millions dollars to the government.

Laliberté, through Investel Capital Corporation, currently holds several international patents and patents-pending.