Renaissance Riffort Curacao guilty for Aqua Spa downfall

ORANGE CITY / WILLEMSTAD

- Aruba Bank is not to blame in the demise of the luxurious Aqua Spa Beauty Spa of Arubans Mena Lopez and Emile Hassell. The court has concluded that the Landlord Riffort and the Renaissance (Curacao) did act unlawfully and must pay compensation.

Amigoe Nieuws Curacao

February 19. 2013

By our reporter

Sharina Henriquez

The Court of First Instance in Curacao declared a verdict yesterday in the case brought by the entrepreneurs Hassell , Lopez and Arnold Huizing court appointed Curator and trustee of the bankrupt beauty salon as one of the plaintiffs. In total demands Aqua Spa 12 million florins to damages: $ 5.4 million from Riffort / Renaissance and nearly 2.2 million florins of Aruba Bank. During the handling of the trial on 18 September, the judge also focuses on the role of the bank in the whole. One of the entrepreneurs, Mena Lopez also began in late October in this paper that the bank during the trial had lied and that the case is a matter of principle was the dishonest act of Aruba Bank by colluding with Renaissance so that the latter could get a spa cheap. In the verdict yesterday the court was not convinced that the bank had acted unlawfully, nor forsaken its duty of care. The company had at the time of termination of the credit agreement had long failed to fulfill its obligations. The interest and principal payments were not paid. Also, the bank had insufficient collateral. "It was therefore for the good of the Bank due to Aqua Spa still got respite in order to find new investors and its financial house in order." The fact that the bank has just invaded in a period of the Holidays (December) and seized the inventory, as the entrepreneurs claimed, has seen all late payments and letters of Aruba Bank this falls under the court therefore understand. Aruba Bank has not acted in breach of 'reasonableness, fairness or fulfill its duty of care'.

Cahoots

One of the most important and remarkable accusations in this lawsuit is the charge of the cahoots of Riffort / Renaissance Aruba with Bank. As evidence for this was the sale of the seized inventory for so little. The bank would for a pittance to the Renaissance have sold the hotel and then went after the bankruptcy of Aqua Spa himself further with a spa in the same location. "Although the Court palpable Aqua Spa note that the current situation as such experiences, the Court sees no evidence of foul play between the Bank and Riffort and Renaissance. Not found what importance the Bank thereby would have, especially now retrospectively must be noted that the Bank is left with a strong claim.

Aruba Bank is not to blame for the demise of Aqua Spa but Riffort Village and Renaissance are according to the judge. Aqua Spa had accused the Riffort Renaissance Curacao of wrong doing because the promised promotions in the agreements were not complied with while the lease for no valid reason was terminated and the spa staff was denied access to get into the Spa. All of these actions were alleged to be an indication of the intention to take over the spa itself. According to the court statements, it’s conceivable that they intended to take over the Spa, making it one of their same groups of companies. This is also evident in the documents which show the companies of the Riffort and the Renaissance acted as if they were the same entity. Hence the court in assessing the damage question - and claim tha both companies belong together. There is an important fact that Aqua Spa was to be promoted to the guests of both these companies. There was also a walkway guaranteed to come in the contract to ensure that the Hotel guests would have easy access to the Spa. That did not happen and Aqua Spa on multiple occasions pleaded and complained to get that access open and useable to the attention of the Hotel yet that never occurred. The promised marketing never happened causing the Spa to receive far fewer clients (11 a day estimated to less than 1 day recorded) than what the consulting firm and Deloitte & Touch projected (later confirmed by the Renaissance’s Spa specialist Carin Coffino who said that 10 Hotel guests per day would be expected.)

When Aruba Bank claimed to be seizing the inventory, Riffort looked at it as the trigger for the lease to be pulled. The Renaissance Riffort Curacao believed that the revoke terms of that agreement had been activated, but the court found that not so. The rent was paid up to date in full at that time. The Judge claimed that the Spa staff was wrongly denied access by the Riffort Renaissance Curacao to their Spa making it impossible to restart the business. Even after the seizure of the bank of the contents (The contents were never seized but left in the Spa for two months until the Spa was sold to the Renaissance) the spa could have continued to run. The actions of denying the Spa staff the ability to enter their place of business deprived them of their rights as a business to proceed and from these actions the court claims the damages have occurred.

Aqua Spa and its investors have additional evidence in safe hands that has not been introduced in the court. They will measure the need to present that evidence in relationship to how this verdict is carried out and the different parties are addressed. They understand the complexities of Business and Banking Commerce and what kind of impact damaging evidence to any of these parties could bring to the Antilles and it’s already suffering economy.

Translated by Google; Dutch to English The translated version in many parts was unreadable so the writers interpretation played a part in the translation to English. There is no intent on the writer’s part to change the meaning of the original intent. The translation in some sentence structures is simply not very good so please don’t get bogged down in needing exact English grammar to match Dutch sentence structure.