(CMR) A former director of a Cayman Economic City (CEC) company, Gary D. Mares, is threatening to sue The Compass and Offshore Alert over disclosing a lawsuit that was filed against him in Grand Court.
Mares by his own admittance was a director for a Cayman registered company called Rio Dorado Finance Limited SEZC (RDF). The letter claims that there were issues between the parties “prior to RDF entering the agreement with CEC”.
The Writ of Summons was filed on 25 May 2018 by Priestleys on behalf of CEC and claims that Mares is in breach of the agreement between himself and CEC. It states, inter alia:
“The Plaintiff agreed to discount the equivalent of the first month's rent to the Defendant, resulting in a deduction ofUS$4,104.17. Thereafter the Plaintiff made one quarterly payment of US$16,416.66 after which no further payments were made. In breach of the Licence the Licensee failed to pay the fees by the due date or at all.
It further claims that numerous demands were made for payment and that the
“The First Defendant indicated that he would satisfy the full debt, at that time due, upon receipt of funds due to be received by the First Defendant within the next weeks.
According to the Writ payment was never received and they are now seeking US$77,979.17 plus internet and other fees.
However, in his letter dated 9 August Mares claims that the Compass article by Ken Silva and published on 5 June 2018 was “factually incorrect and personally defamatory”. He further notes that at no point and time was he to be held liable for the debts of the company nor did he ever promise to pay said debts. He writes:
“RDF is a separate legal entity capable of being sued and suing in its own right.”
He also blames the breakdown of the contract on CEC's performance issues sharing:
“During the course of the arrangements CEC a dispute arose in relation to rental charges, CEC performance and CEC sought to terminate the arrangements. Prior to RDF entering the agreement with CEC, RDF experienced service issues with CEC with extensive delays in CEC fulfilling its obligations in connection with seeking initial work permits. CEC failed to fulfill further obligations under the agreement, including timely work permit renewals. In consequence of CEC’s service level shortcomings, threats against the legal entity for full payment (after RDF was relocated on 2 occasions), as CEC continued with its threats and did not address the service issues RDF advised CEC that it would walk away from the agreement between CEC and RDF.”
He then discloses that not only does RDF have no assets but he was also informed by it's registered office that the company was struck from the registrar on 24 July 2018. Essentially the company no longer exits.
Mares was recently listed on LinkedIn in as a “non-executive director of Australian Whisky Holdings from July 2014. According to the Compass June 6 article before the account was removed he was listed as a joint managing director of RDF – a company “involved in the mining of gold and other precious metals in Ecuador”.
However, his profile has since been removed. He has given the Compass and Offshore Alert 14 days to respond. The Cayman Compass has since removed the article entitled Cayman Enterprise City sues two tenants over rent dispute from their primary website.
The lawsuit remains on the Offshore Alert page in its original format. Offshore Alert makes no comment on their website for lawsuits but merely published a PDF copy of the Grand Court document. Grand Court filings are considered public documents and are available to anyone wishing to conduct the necessary searches.
Offshore Alert shared this letter several days ago on their website. They responded to a query from us on the letter by stating that:
“It's preposterous for anyone to think that OffshoreAlert can be successfully sued for publishing a publicly-available court filing. We receive legal threats on a regular basis and, as I tell them all: ‘Bring it on!'”
Note: CMR has picked up on the fact that Writ makes reference to the First and Second Defendants but only Gary D. Mares is listed on the actual document itself itself. CMR also contacted the Cayman Compass but have received no response by the time of publication. Original lawsuit can be read here
Letter sent to The Compass and copied to Offshore Alert can be read here
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