by Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Nov 26/97) - Yellowknifers who invested in Dix Group properties in Hawaii and California are hoping there is strength in numbers.

To protect their investments, they are forming an organization. It is not clear how many people here are exposed to losses but so far, 30 investors have met in Yellowknife and about 15 in Hay River.

"As many as 50 to 60 NWT residents have invested," said Robert Doherty.

Doherty, the NWT's deputy public works minister, bought a Dix condo in Hawaii.

Under the deal, investors paid $33,000 US as downpayment on each condominium unit. They used cash, RRSPs or a combination of both. Mortgages are in the investors' names and were to paid by Dix using rental income.

This past summer, US banks who issued the mortgages started writing to individual investors because mortgages were not being paid.

Earlier this month, Kerry Dix was found dead in his West Vancouver home.

B.C. Securities Commission communications manager Barbara Barry said Dix died before regulators could interview him.

"Some of the major brokerage firms involved in selling the investments have hired experts to gather information and make recommendations to the investors, of which there may be as many as four to five hundred," Doherty said.

B.C.-based Planvest Pacific Financial Corporation and Vantage Securities are attempting to put together a recovery plan, Doherty said.

But the two investment houses sold the product and they not only have an interest in protecting their individual clients, they also need to control damage to their business reputations.

Some Northern investors are concerned about giving investment houses approval to act on their behalf without adequate information about a recovery plan.

"These were the investment houses that sold the product in the first place," Doherty said.

"(But) we're trying to establish a relationship with the team in Vancouver that will be positive," he said.

Doherty, and his fellow Yellowknife investors Patti Szkwarok and Murray Rennie told xxxYellowknifer Sunday that they believe the investments may have been flawed and perhaps fraudulent from the beginning.

Doherty, Szkwarok and Rennie are not yet talking about suing their investment advisers for recommending the deal. They are more interested in collecting information.

"Dix's estate is in limbo, the executor has not released who the general partner is," Szkwarok said. "Since we've had meetings as a group, the anxiety level is reduced," Rennie said.

Doherty asked someone he knew in Vancouver to visit Dix Group offices. He found three guys photocopying documents and not willing to say anything, Doherty said.

Subsequent calls to the Dix Group have proved fruitless.

The Yellowknife organization is asking Hay River residents to contact former territorial finance minister John Pollard.

Pollard declined to comment directly Sunday and referred inquiries to Doherty, who is heading up the investor's organization.

"I have confidence in Pollard. It sounds like the people in Hay River support him," Doherty said.

Joining the organization gives the benefit of group legal representation. Doherty has contacted the Vancouver-based legal firm of Ladner Downs. Inclusion may also help in obtaining information that might otherwise be difficult or expensive to obtain, he added.