Jury selection began Tuesday in 3rd District Court in the felony trial of Salt Lake businessman C. Dean Larsen.

This trial - the first of several for Larsen - takes place 11/2 years after Larsen was charged with 50 felony counts for allegedly bilking millions of dollars from thousands of investors in his bankrupt Granada company.Larsen, an attorney, is the former president of Granada. The company was a real estate development general partnership that operated in Utah for 17 years, ultimately accumulating nearly 100 limited partnerships under its umbrella.

The state is trying Larsen on 18 counts of securities fraud in this first trial. He plead not guilty to those charges in August.

He is charged with a total of 42 felony counts. The charges have been grouped according to their similar natures and broken into several trials, said Rob Parrish, assistant Utah attorney general.

Larsen originally was charged with 50 felony counts in October 1988. The charges include securities fraud, unlawful dealing with property by a fiduciary, sale or offer of unregistered securities, theft and securities fraud.

He was bound over for trial on 42 of those counts in July, following a three-week preliminary hearing. The state had dropped four charges prior to the preliminary hearing. Four others were dropped during the hearing when the court would not allow the admission of evidence necessary to support those charges.

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This first trial focuses on Larsen's dealings with EFF Fund Limited, Parrish said. EFF Fund Limited is technically one of Granada's many limited partnerships. However, EFF played a much larger role in Granada than the other partnerships did.

People invested in EFF, then EFF in turn would use the investments to make loans to Granada projects in need of capital, explained Gary Jub-ber, attorney for the Granada trustee. "It was a fund-raising entity for Granada and Granada-related proj-ects," he said.

Many investors claim they were not told that the investments they made in EFF were being spent on real estate projects. The 18 charges of securities fraud arise from such claims.

Larsen will be tried on the remaining 24 counts in two subsequent trials.

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