US merger fails to halt CardCall investigation

Camelot is continuing the investigation into phone card supplier CardCall despite its merger with US company DCI Telecommunications.

CardCall signed a definitive agreement with DCI last Wednesday to merge this week. DCI will swap one share of its stock for each share of CardCall and pay an additional 600,000 in consideration.

The agreement includes changing the CardCall name to DCI Telecommunications.

Camelot’s investigation follows revelations by Marketing Week and the Mail on Sunday that the company’s founder and vice president of marketing Michael Zwebner is an undischarged bankrupt following the collapse of his property company in 1990 (MW August 9 1996).

It was also discovered that Zwebner’s company in the US owed money to AT&T, Sprint Communications, Allnet and back-taxes to New York State.

Zwebner failed to float CardCall on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in October and his bid to secure the sale of CardCall to telecoms company MTT collapsed (MW December 20 1996).

Marketing Week also revealed links between CardCall and Camelot shareholder Gtech (January 10).

A spokeswoman for Camelot says: “We are aware of this development with CardCall. However, our investigation into the company is continuing.”

DCI is based in Fairfield, Connecticut, and makes telecoms software for computers and the Internet. It also has a phone card operation.