Late on the night of Sept. 21, some 50 men stormed into Globus, the underground shopping mall in the very heart of Kyiv.
They took over the premises and used an electric saw to break into management offices and the computer center of the mall. Then, they reprogrammed the security system to lock out the mall’s management, according to Svyatoslav Ilchenko, director of the shopping center’s management company.
The raid was over and done with by 2 a.m., Ilchenko says, and there was no reaction from either the Shevchenkivsky or Pechersky police districts that received phone calls about the alleged forceful takeover of the $200 million property. Five days on, the status quo remained, and representatives of the management company and the beneficiary owner claimed to be locked out of their property.
The Kyiv prosecutor’s office said on Sept. 26 that it has opened a criminal case into the matter.
“We want our shopping center back that we legally and beneficiary own,” said Leonard Sebastian, managing director of London & Regional Properties, the British owner of the mall, on Sept. 26 at a press conference. “We will go to the highest level to recover our property. We have investments in 16 jurisdictions and have not had such precedents.”
A Sept. 16 Kyiv court ruling enabled the property’s takeover, which re-established Olena Morris as director of LR Globus Limited, the management company that runs the mall on behalf of a layer of three offsshore entities that formally own it.
“There was no raidership,” says Morris. “I have a legitimate court decision and I took charge.”
She denied that she did it by force while an appeal process was ongoing, but admitted that she replaced most of the security guards of the mall .
However, Morris was restored in a different position that she held until June. According to Sebastian, Morris was previously head of the department for development of LLP Ukraine Real, another arm of London & Regional Properties in Ukraine that has no formal affiliation with Globus. Morris, however, claims that she was de-facto running the mall between June 2008 and May 2013.
The Kyiv City Solomenskiy District Court sided with her testimony in its ruling.
The judge who ruled in Morris’s favor, however, has a track record for making decisions that become the basis of so-called raider attacks, according to a local raider prevention civic group. Andriy Semydidko, director of Anti-Raider Union of Entrepreneurs of Ukraine, says that the judge, Tatyana Oksyuta, has been on his agency’s radar since 2006.
She could not be reached for comment.
However, Oleksandr Minin, senior partner at KM Partners law firm, which represents the beneficiary owner, says that the court dispute is just a cover.
“Formally, this suit is about labor relations, but effectively, with its help, an asset has been taken over,” Minin says.
He said that even if a manager is restored in a job, the law gives them no right to manage the asset owned by the corporation, in this case the beneficiary company LRP.
Morris, however, denies that she has prevented LRP company officials or representatives from accessing the mall.
“I have no information that they have no access. Let them come with journalists,” she said. “They have not called me personally. The entire staff is working calmly, there was no takeover, nobody forced anyone on the floor or anything like that.”
Yet Sebastian of LRP insists that his company lost control of their property, and that the Sept. 21 night takeover was premeditated, well-organized and sponsored by high officials.
He refused to give the names of the alleged sponsors, however.
LRP has filed court appeals as well as complaints to two prosecutor offices, the president, the prime minister, the interior minister and First Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov, the head of Ukraine’s anti-raider commission. It also got the British embassy involved.
“We at the (British) embassy are very concerned about the recent events that took place around this property,” said Creena Lavery, head of the commercial section.
She said the business community is watching the case closely as an indicator of the state of the business environment in the country.
“It will be very important for the Ukrainian authorities to demonstrate that this case has been dealt with (swiftly) and transparently,” Lavery said.
Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached [email protected].
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