Venezuela bondholder group seeks to seize frozen assets in Florida lawsuits

Strategic Considerations: Creditors that have converted bond debt into judgments are seeking ways to collect. Casa Express, which was the first to win such a judgment, appears to be seeking to seize property in Florida that is owned by an allegedly corrupt individual through a company now under US sanctions.

Court filing shows Planet 2 Reaching and Posh 8 Dynamic are subjects of claims
Companies own Miami real estate

Casa Express, a company with a USD 43m judgment against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for defaulted bonds, has sued to seize frozen assets belonging to a person allegedly involved in Venezuelan corruption, court documents show.

Casa Express registered its New York judgment in Florida on 27 August and then filed 13 sealed motions in federal court in Miami between 10 September and 17 September, all in the same court docket as its registration of the New York judgment.

🚨 #HSI is searching for Raúl Gorrín Belisario. He is wanted for 💰 money laundering. 📞 1-866-347-2423 with information. #WantedWednesday pic.twitter.com/UB4kjuslMs

— HSI Honolulu (@HSIHonolulu) September 29, 2021

Howard Srebnick, a Miami lawyer, filed an unsealed note to the court today requesting additional time to respond on behalf of companies called Planet 2 Reaching and Posh 8 Dynamic.

Those companies were previously mentioned in a press release from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which regulates trade sanctions. The 8 January 2019 statement accused a “regime insider” named Raul Antonio Gorrin Belisario of having used the companies, among others, to help extract USD 2.4bn of “corrupt proceeds” from the Venezuelan government through “illicit foreign exchange operations.” Both companies are based in Delaware and are owned by Gorrin, according to the OFAC statement.

Srebnick didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to Srebnick’s filing, some of Casa Express’s sealed motions were aimed at commencing proceedings against his clients. They “require the entities to file an affidavit stating why certain real property should not be applied toward the satisfaction of the judgment obtained by plaintiff against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” he wrote. The entities and real estate are “blocked” by OFAC, he wrote.

“Plaintiff’s counsel advised that plaintiff intends to serve similar notices,” Srebnick wrote, adding a reference to additional sealed filings.

¡ENTÉRESE! Adrián Velásquez, ex edecán de Chávez y socio de Raúl Gorrín, retrasa extradición a EEUU #21Sep #Venezuela https://t.co/TRhpm0xyYH

— Maduradas.com (@maduradascom) September 21, 2021

Local property records show that Planet 2 Reaching owns a seven-bedroom, 8 1/2-bath, 9,514-square-foot home on Fisher Island in Miami Beach. It is assessed at USD 11.8m but was last sold in 2016 for USD 15.5m. Fisher Island is a mix of luxury housing, marinas and an oil terminal; it is unreachable by road.

Posh 8 Dynamic owns a three-bed, 4 1/2-bath, 6,121-square-foot condo on the 44th floor of a building on Collins Ave. in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. It’s assessed at USD 6.2m but sold pre-construction in 2016 for USD 12.8m.

As reported, some assets blocked pursuant to US sanctions have been handed over to plaintiffs in terrorism cases who have been able to convince judges that the owners are “agencies or instrumentalities” of the FARC, the demobilized Colombian guerilla group. Victims of FARC violence are fighting with one another and with lawyers for Venezuela and its state-owned enterprises as they seek to grab hundreds of millions of dollars of cash and assets, including property in the name of Venezuela’s central bank and Finance Ministry.

by Steven Bodzin, New York