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These are not the dollars you’re for.
That’s what Chicago-based real estate firm Steve Ivankovich, Atlas Residential is to convince Hong Kong-based lenders that they’re not easy on the longtime investor and his bank he’s suing for $4. 5 million. Atlas is the son-in-law of Alliance Holdings, once the nation’s ninth-largest apartment owner in the mid-2000s.
Ivankovich will have to take a stand against the bank, Stifel, in Illinois after a lawsuit he filed against the monetary institution earlier this year in Florida was transferred to a Chicago-area federal court last month.
He is no stranger to delicate real estate disputes, as he tried at the last minute in 2014 to save a residential skyscraper assignment known as the Chicago Spire. This construction reportedly rose 2,000 feet in Streeterville, though it ultimately failed to pull out the bankruptcy allocation before the assets fell into the hands of Related Midwest, which made new plans for the site.
In his most recent legal moves, Ivankovich last year lost a separate lawsuit filed through Hong Kong-based Zhu Zhai Holdings and Peter Pui Tak Lee for more than $3 million in loans that the investor personally guaranteed and would never have paid for minimal interest.
After a judgment was issued against Ivankovich ordering him to pay Zhu Zhai and Lee $4. 5 million, equivalent to the original loan debt, plus fees and interest, he turned around and sued Stifel for freezing the budget and disclosing monetary data in the accounts of several Limited Liability Companies. Atlas-related companies controlled through Ivankovich. The bank blocked the accounts after receiving the judgment as Zhu Zhai tried to collect the debt.
Companies under Ivankovich’s control, however, are not required to pay, his lawyers say. That’s because they have the budget of other investors in genuine real estate ventures involving Ivankovich and his company, Atlas, which owns dozens of apartment communities in Texas, adding that Dallas area as well as Florida and the United Kingdom, according to its website. The account freeze was lifted earlier this year through a court order, according to court documents.
“If Stifel can do that to a corporation like Atlas, he can do it to anyone,” said Jason M. to be paid through entities that were in debt to them and that Stifel violated the privacy of those third-party entities and withheld their money. “
Stifel and his attorneys did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Zhu Zhai declined to comment. Before the case was transferred to Illinois, Stifel asked the Florida court to dismiss the case brought through the Atlas companies, calling his lawsuit against the bank “an attempt at a commercial forum . . . and to evade recovery by preventing the judgment creditor from finding non-exempt persons. “assets held through third parties such as Stifel.
Lenders are still racing to collect the $4. 5 million judgment. In their initial lawsuit filed in 2020 that resulted in Ivankovich’s opposing judgment and his failed appeals, Zhu Zhai and Lee called the Atlas CEO’s moves “a transparent case for unequivocal breach of warranty contracts and fraud. “
They said Ivankovich told them he would soon turn Atlas Acquisitions into a publicly traded company and needed the $3 million for pre-IPO expenses before the company was indexed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
“But those representations were false,” the trial said. Ivankovich has distorted the duration and monetary strength of the Atlas organization, and will no longer pursue an initial public offering for the foreseeable future. “
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