Shipping team of Lexcellence Law Firm is providing legal support and protects interests of 25 Libyan firms and citizens - owners of 597 vehicles. Thanks to joint efforts of the Embassy of Libya in Ukraine and our team, fraudulent attempt of criminals to take possession of cars with total value of 20 million U.S. dollars was prevented.
Currently a process of returning of the vehicles to Libyan owners is pending. According to this criminal offense Ukrainian authorities conducted a pre-trial investigation.
Background:
On March 5, 2013 597 cars were loaded on board the vessel “FAINA” (IMO 7419377) in the sea port of Aqaba (Jordan) in order to be transported to port of Benghazi (Libya). The vessel was in ownership of WATERLUX AG (Panama). During the carriage, the Master of the m/v "FAINA" changed the route and the cargo was delivered to Illyichevsk sea port in Ukraine, where all cars were unloaded and part of the cars had already been customs cleared in favor of unknown local firm. Representatives of Libyan owners of the cars had arrived to Ilyichevsk just in time to prevent the leaving of first lot of several dozen of the cars from the territory of the port terminal.
The fraudsters arranged sham papers on 597 cars, that the cars were bought by a company ALCO-Invest (Odessa, Ukraine) from Panama based company WELLGOS PQ S.A. The Panama company was registered just 4 days before the m/v “FAINA” was loaded with the cars in Aquaba port. By any definition, it is impossible that WELLGOS PQ S.A. was able to complete purchase transaction of 597 cars in amount of US$20M 4 days after the company was established and without bank account. The shipping documents were issued in the same way.
On March 26, 2013 the criminal proceedings was opened at the request of the Jordanian shippers. On April 1, 2013 the m/v "FAINA" and all 597 cars were arrested by a court. However, due to the slow and not objective investigation of the criminal case, according to the opinion of the Libyan side, citizens of Libya have gone to extreme measures, and arrested sistership, m/v "ETEL" with 19 Ukrainian citizens on board, demanding from Ukrainian authorities to return their property.
More details can be found on the website of media resources:
http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/163286.html
http://www.tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=1&i=10507
http://www.kommersant.ua/doc/2249881?isSearch=True
