The situation about sudden death of Badri Patarkatsishvili, who meddled in a hopeless struggle against Georgian authorities, is lent a continuation looking like John Gresham’s thrillers. The oligarch’s cousin, Josef Kay, announced himself to be Badri’s heir and got a control over TV station “Imedi”, with approval from Georgian regime. “Imedi” was the most disturbing asset of Patarkatsishvili for Georgia.     

Oddly, no one had known that Josef Kay is the Badri’s heir, except an American lawyer Mr. Seltzer. As reported by Josef Kay himself, “Mr. Seltzer came to me on the second or third day and told me that Badri Patarkatsishvili had left a will. He left it with Mr. Seltzer in New York.” 

In the mean time, Mr. Seltzer is known to have been involved in a few scandalous cases, the last of them being the action by Sergei Veselkov, the owner and founder of Nord Service, Inc (NSI). The action was brought to the Texas Court against former Company’s managers Palter and Keiser, and the lawyer of those two is Mr. Emmanuel Seltzer.  

In his suit, the owner accused his hired managers of stealing his company.  

During the court proceedings, the lawyer Seltzer presented a number of documents and witnesses to prove the alleged fact of selling the company by Mr. Veselkov. 

Besides, poor Mr. Veselkov – whose oil drilling companies are working successfully in Siberia and who started the company in question in America for enlarging his business and patenting the technologies - was accused by Mr. Seltzer of procuring, organizing the channel of illegal immigration to the USA, and money laundering. 

The experts from NSI managed to prove that all the submitted documents were forged.

3 March the judge Leonard Davis recognized the fact of falsification and declared Sergei Veselkov to be the only legal owner of NSI. It becomes clear from the court’s decision that Palter and Keiser could not be people who have forged the signatures at the presented deeds, as their signatures and those by the false witnesses were just copied from other documents. It’s difficult to figure out by whom it could have been done, if not by the lawyer Seltzer.    

Against this background, the will allegedly signed by Patarkatsishvili at the Mr. Seltzer’s office and known only to Mr. Seltzer, does not bear scrutiny. Well, Mr. Seltzer has got involved in more than one scandal. In its time, the Inkombank accused him of stealing $5.6 millions and before that he was charged with a fraud seizure of a small American clinic. He had brought in and replaced the locks there. In that case the court decided he had to pay $2 millions to the grieved party.     

The case of NSI Company is likely to be continued. It is not accepted in America that a lawyer presents the witnesses testifying under the oath the documents to be authentic while all that was really forged. Anyway, forgery and false evidence cause criminal liability.

Significantly, the judge Leonard Davis considered the case on its merit from the very beginning. What really mattered for the judge was the fact the lawyer presented forged deeds and false witnesses, and not the fact that the lawyer Seltzer had proclaimed himself to be the fighter against Russian mafia.

Further reaction by Georgian authorities towards the “will” submitted by Mr. Seltzer will be a litmus test showing to which kind of justice the Georgian authorities are closer to: the Texas independent court or Russian-like biased court. 

Novaya Gazeta information

Emmanuel Seltzer, a USA citizen of Russian origin, was considered in the USA to be an expert in struggle with money laundering and organized crime. He cooperated with the US investigative bodies about the case of money laundering through the Bank of New York. 

12 March Emmanuel Seltzer was arrested at the Minsk airport. It is known that the lawyers of Patarkatsishvili’s family had applied to Georgian and Byelorussian authorities, accusing Mr. Seltzer of fraud and forgery of the hereditary deeds. At the time being, Mr. Seltzer is arraigned under the Article 380 Part 2 of the Byelorussian Criminal Code – that’s about use of the forged documents by a group of accomplices.    

Josef Kay (his real name is Soso Kakiashvili) said the arrest of his lawyer to be the result of intrigues by Berezovsky.