Essex Street Property Named in Lawsuit Involving Philippines Billionaire
The saga of 11 Essex Street – demolished for a fancy micro unit development – continues this week as the Lower East Side property is named in an international lawsuit against a Philippines billionaire.
Bloomberg reported that Enrique Razon was sued in New York by a company claiming the tycoon illegally terminated an agreement for a Manila casino and is hiding assets stateside to avoid paying an arbitration award. What the lawsuit calls a “vast network of shell companies in the United States designed to conceal Razon’s ownership of assets within this country’s borders.”
One of those assets is 11 Essex Street, which was demolished last year and primed for redevelopment by 11 Essex Street Realty LLC as an eleven-story “micro unit” apartment building “catering to young professionals,” in its own words.
The complaint was filed on Monday in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against defendants Enrique K. Razon, Jr.; Bloomberry Resorts and Hotels Inc., Sureste Properties, Inc. and other entities. (Razon was recently named by Forbes as the second richest billionaire in the Philippines.)
The claimants seek to have a $296M award imposed against the defendants by an arbitration panel in Singapore that recognized and enforced in the U.S.
Below is the complaint in full (page 10 references 11 Essex):
Enrique Razon Lawsuit by BoweryBoogie on Scribd
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