Kuwaiti billionaire exits small B.C. town

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A troubled cannabis company founded by Kuwaiti billionaire Bassam Alghanim has sold its assets in the small West Boundary community of Midway.

BZAM Ltd., which was granted creditor protection by an Ontario court in February this year, bought a farm on the Kettle River west of Midway in 2019 and set about turning it into a cannabis cultivation operation.

Primarily, this involved the installation of a five kilometre long, three-metre high, ring-lock security fence surrounding a 0.4-square-kilometre bench above the Kettle River.

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In 2020, BZAM bought the historic, but at that time vacant, Hotel Midway — the scene of a wild-west shootout in the summer of 1908 that left hotelier Charles Thomet dead.

The purchases were among a string of Canada-wide cannabis deals struck by BZAM, whose chairman and largest shareholder is Alghanim.

Alghanim, the Los Angeles consul for the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, inherited a fortune from his father’s Kuwaiti-based industrial group and is a former chair of the Gulf Bank of Kuwait.

The University of California, Berkeley, graduate ran the family business for a while, but now lives in L.A., where he owns several adjoining properties in the Bel Air neighbourhood. According to the Los Angeles Business Journal, the 72-year-old’s net worth is $1.7 billion.

BZAM held the Midway farm until August 2023, when it was sold to a B.C. company called Mi-Way Venture Partners Ltd.

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In February, Mi-Way sold the farm to Christina Lake Cannabis Ltd.

Mi-Way Venture Partners was founded by the former CLC CEO and current board member Joel Dumaresq.

According to a statement from CLC, Dumaresq was not a director or shareholder of Mi-Way when that sale was made.

The company has just planted the farm’s first cannabis crop, using local workers and seedlings from CLC’s Christina Lake nursery.

“We are a proud B.C. company and are committed to contributing positively to the community,” the company statement read.

Hotel Midway was used by BZAM to house foreign workers brought to the area to work on the farm. It was sold last July to Abbotsford businesswoman Carissa Boynton, who is now using its six upstairs rooms for short-term rental accommodation.

Boynton said the hotel was in good condition when she bought it, and she is hoping to attract a partner to operate the kitchen and bar.

In the meantime, the old bar and dining area has been thoroughly cleaned by employee Carol Davis, who moved to Midway from Ontario after searching “cheap housing in B.C.” online.

Guests are able to use the bar area, likely not knowing that Thomet — a former B.C. Provincial Police officer — was killed there by two masked men who fled by horse over the nearby border and were never located.

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Davis says she has plenty of work and has never lived in a friendlier community.

Midway is in a semi-arid zone in West Boundary country between Osoyoos and Grand Forks.

The hotel is directly across from the Frank Carpenter Memorial Campground, through which the Kettle River runs.

According to BZAM, competition and fragmentation of the Canadian cannabis industry as well as financial underperformance and pressures from taxes owing had forced the company to restructure its business.

BZAM wants to be sold rather than liquidated.

“It is expected that the BZAM Group will emerge from creditor protection as a stronger company with a healthier balance sheet,” the company says.

When BZAM purchased the Midway farm shares were trading at around US$22. As of June 21, shares were trading at under two cents.

At their peak on Jan. 22, 2021, a share in CLC cost $1.04. As of June 21, a CLC share was worth three cents.

dcarrigg@postmedia.com

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