A new video released by an Irish newspaper brought to light a new freaky moment in the long story of Ukraina shopping mall in Kyiv, which has been the subject of a raider attack and court disputes for years. The mall's former owner, bankrupt Irish tycoon Sean Quinn Sr. and his family associates, have been accused of using unsavory methods in a desperate attempt to prevent the mall from being seized by creditors, a charge they have always denied.
The new video
shows Sean Quinn Jr. and his cousin Peter Darragh allegedly demanding $5
million from their Ukrainian partners in exchange for handing control over the estimated
$78 million shopping mall to their Ukrainian partners.
The video,
released by the Irish Daily Mail on Jan. 20, was taken at a meeting in a Kyiv
restaurant in January 2012. In the clip, the fate of the lucrative Ukraina
shopping mall was discussed between its former Irish owners and their alleged
Ukrainian associates who apparently helped them strip the asset.
The newspaper
reported that the video as well as an earlier video extract of the same meeting
released in July were verified for authenticity by Grant Fredericks, an
instructor of forensic video analysis and digital multimedia evidence
processing at the FBI’s National Academy in Quantico, Viriginia.
The Ukrainians
allegedly present at the meeting were Laryssa Yanez Puga, director of Ukraina
shopping mall, and Volodymyr Hurtovy and Dmytro Zaitsev, both representatives
of Lynhurst Investment, a British Virgin Islands company that allegedly took
part in transferring a $45 million debt claim over the mall in violation of
Irish court orders and injunctions.
Hurtovy is also
the deputy director of Ukraina shopping mall.
The Ukrainians
featuring in this story have failed to respond to numerous Kyiv Post requests
for comments, including on Jan. 22.
In his response to
Irish Mail’s video release, Quinn Jr. said: “The selective video clips
published have been carefully edited and manipulated to create a false
impression of the meeting with the sole intention of further damaging the Quinn
family’s credibility. As we have consistently maintained, the Quinn family are
not in control of the disputed assets.”
In turn, the Irish
tabloid said it “has provided to the Quinn family all (emphasis added) the
footage in our possession. We have also gone to great lengths to establish the
footage has not been manipulated – an FBI instructor has certified this.”
A
state-owned Irish bank has since April 2011 been unable to wrest control over
the estimated $78 Ukraina mall in a
bid to recover debt owed by the billionaire-turned-bankrupt Irishman Sean Quinn
Sr. and his family.
Quinn
Sr.’s family once owned the property
as part of a $500 million global property portfolio, but he, his son Quinn Jr. and his nephew Darragh were
found in contempt of court in Ireland last year and subsequently sentenced to
prison terms for shifting the assets, including Ukraina, beyond the reach of
Irish Bank Resolution Corporation.
Despite
controlling more than 90 percent shares in Ukraina, the state-owned IBRC has been involved in drawn-out legal disputes in
Ukraine. It has yet to install its manager at the mall, and access the
estimated $10 million yearly rent roll there.
Instead,
Yanez Puga, the current mall director who worked for the Quinns, is suspected
of thwarting the bank’s efforts together with Russian and Ukrainian lawyers,
affidavits from Irish courts have shown.
In the video, Darragh is shown demanding $5
million from the Ukrainians, and expressed extreme frustration at only being
offered $100,000 at the meeting. Both Darragh and Quinn Jr. were demanding the
millions of dollars in return for signing over control of the Ukraina mall.
This would contradict a July affidavit in
which Quinn Jr. claimed the $100,000 offered was an installment for a service
contract totaling some $500,000. The Ukrainian partners in the video allegedly
confirmed that the shopping mall’s account had nearly $6 million on it.
A Ukrainian company, Elegant
Invest, currently has the $45 million debt claim over the Kyiv shopping center that originates
at a Quinn firm based in Northern Ireland. The right to the debt was
subsequently transferred to Lyndhurst in the British
Virgin Islands that involved Zaitsev who was allegedly
present at the Fellini restaurant meeting on Jan. 21, 2012 when
the Quin family decided to put its $500 million foreign properties portfolio
beyond the Irish bank’s grasp.
Next,
the debt was transferred to Elegant Invest using another Ukrainian firm, Zenit,
as a conduit, whose right to the debt was recognized by Kyiv courts last summer.
And Zenit, the Ukrainian conduit company that transferred the debt claim from Lyndhurst to Elegant Invest, is
headed by Artem Basmadzhan who in 2009 headed Ukraine’s only gold producer,
state-owned Zakarpatopolymetally, when
the company was heading into bankruptcy, reported Business News Europe.
Zaitsev
headed the creditors’ committee for the gold producer back then. A Northern Ireland court ruled just last week
that “Zaitsev,
and another business partner ignored, frustrated and jeopardized an injunction against any transfer of debts
surrounding the shopping mall in Kyiv,”
the Irish Mail reported.
The
judge said their defiance of court orders was flagrant.
Moreover, Volodymyr Hurtovy was the administrator of the creditors’
committee of the gold producer in 2009.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
