LOS ANGELES—A federal judge ordered attorneys Mark Geragos and Brian Kabateck to turn over a list of claimants and bank records related to a $17.5 million settlement between the French AXA Insurance company and descendants of the Armenian Genocide, who had filed participated in the class action lawsuit, reported the National Law Journal.
The two attorneys had until Wednesday, May 4, to turn over the claimants’ list and have until May 12 to present bank records according to an April 28 ruling by US District Judge Christina Snyder.
The order comes after the a complaint by the attorneys’ one time co-counsel Vartkes Yeghiayan raised concerns about how the AXA funds were distributed and whether the two adhered to the ruling.
Geragos and Kabateck filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on March 11 alleging that Yeghiayan had defrauded the community by diverting settlements funds to fictitious charities.
Amanda Bronstad of the National Law Review reported that the AXA settlement allocated $3 million for organizations espousing Armenian causes; whatever remained unclaimed was to go to additional charitable institutions. By early 2010, more than $8.5 million had been distributed, with nearly $2.9 million unclaimed. Kabateck, a partner at Kabateck Brown Kellner, and Geragos, of the Law Offices of Geragos & Geragos, were in charge of designating one set of charitable organizations and Yeghiayan a separate set. Snyder gave Kabateck and Geragos $1.9 million, while Yeghiayan, of Yeghiayan Law Corp. in Glendale, Calif., received $952,000; the funds were placed in separate accounts.
Bronstad reported that Kabateck, in an interview, said that he and Geragos will produce the records requested by the order, adding that he and Geragos had nothing to do with paying AXA claims.
A week after Geragos and Kabateck filed the suit against Yeghiayan, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Central Political Council issued a declaration calling on attorneys involved in cases related to Genocide survivor settlements to immediately submit all records to an independent audit.
“Regardless of whether these accusations prove to be true, they do have the potential to shake the trust of our people concerning national issues, despite the fact that the lawsuits in question stemmed from personal interests and were initiated and led by individual attorneys,” said the ARF declaration.
“In order to maintain –as much as possible– the trust of the Armenian people intact, we demand that the sides, independent of the court proceedings, voluntarily and immediately submit the settlement disbursements to a full and complete independent professional audit, and inform the Armenian people of the results. The process should have been carried out with such transparency from the very beginning. Now it has become urgent and critical,” concluded the declaration.
Read Bronstad’s National Law Journal article here.
At long last! As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said:
“. . .the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
Just reading this article makes me nauseous! It is not for me or any of us to judge the individuals, but it is a sad matter that this has happened. Please let’s pray that this is a misunderstanding and the disclosure clarifys everything. This is not what our community needs.
It’s a real shame and we should be embarassed.We are blaming Armenia’s leadership with
corruption,neglect and oligarchism,but here,in diaspora,some self appointed attorneys,with petty and narrow
minded approach,trying to settle Insurance claims of descendants of Armenian Genocide for 10,20 million dollars,without accountability and transparency,until a Federal judge orders them to do so.
Why we are so dumb?Why we should settle a BILLION dollar potential case with some petty cash?
Who gave the right to those attorneys to pursue this case?Where is our political leadership?
To be honest,I do not see any difference between Armenia’s leadership and diaspora’s multi-headed leadership.
Siegfried and Roy at it again!