According to the ever-reliable Fox News, the SEC is on the case and Escala is not out of the woods yet in relation to the firm's role in the Afinsa investment fraud case:

'Enron of Spain' Fallout Ripples Into U.S. Markets

June 07, 2006
By Richard Behar

Some experts are calling it the "Enron of Spain," the biggest financial scam that country has ever known. A Spanish prosecutor has warned it might have “grave repercussions for the Spanish economy.” And now, the shock waves are rippling into U.S. markets, where the full effects are still unknown.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission launched an investigation of a relatively obscure New York stamp and coin trading firm called the Escala Group, a company that has morphed in just three years into the third-largest conglomerate in the collectibles industry, after Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

Trading in the stock of Escala — which has estimated annual revenues of $3 billion — reached a high of $35 in February on the NASDAQ stock exchange, but has slid over the past two weeks to around $7.50 – as the company has been battered by a dozen class-action lawsuits filed in the U.S., alleging fraud.

Escala insists it is innocent of wrongdoing, and notes that no authority has stated otherwise.

The SEC did not reveal the reasons for its probe, but it undoubtedly has much to do with the Spanish scandal, where some 350,000 working and middle-class investors in collectible stamps in Spain and Portugal may have lost billions of dollars in savings...

More here.

-- MDT

Labels: Enron