Peraticos has emerged as the primary target of a lawsuit filed by Praxis Energy Agents in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The petitioner is attempting to claw back cash to cover unpaid invoices that stem from fuel and lubricant deliveries made to the 60,400-dwt tankers Lanner (built 1986) and Eleanora (built 1982) in the first half of 2003. Both ships have since been demolished.
Praxis claims a Hellenic maritime court ordered Peraticos to pay $383,425 to settle the same dispute back in 2004 after it “pierced the corporate veil” by proving the mogul was the sole shareholder of entities that owned the two ships. Subsequent appeals from the opposition were unsuccessful.
The petitioner accused Peraticos of incorporating what its lawyers described as “fictitious legal entities in order to enjoy the benefits of their existence by circumventing the legal provisions available to him and exploiting the existence of these companies for personal gain”.
Praxis, which is represented by an attorney with Chalos & Co, has asked the court to uphold and enforce the foreign judgment in a move that could set the stage for the seizure of property that it believes to be located within Florida’s Southern District.
As TradeWinds has reported, Peraticos was the managing director of Pegasus Shipping, a company that — like many others in the 1990s — floated a junk bond to US investors.
After defaulting on the bond, the $150m issue was restructured in 1999 but the owner’s problems did not end there. For four years, Peraticos fought to sort out the problems that arose from the fact that one of the lending banks had moved to arrest his company's ships. The fleet was sold off by 2003.
Attempts to reach Peraticos for comment about the most recent complaint were not immediately successful on Thursday.
You can read the petition in full by clicking on the link located under the Related Media section to the right of this article
