Corali Lopez-Castro, Partner, Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton, Coral Gables represented the trustee in a bankruptcy case with more than $600 million at stake. Courtesy photo.
U.S. Bankruptcy Chief Judge Laurel M. Isicoff in the Southern District of Florida has settled a long-running dispute over who really owned a string of defendant companies, siding with the trustee, who can now recover more than $600 million in assets and interest in a bankruptcy case.
The debtor, Leonidas Ortega Trujillo, a Miami businessman from a wealthy Ecuadorian family, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in June 2015. But since 1996, he had been in litigation with the Ecuadorian government, represented by Boston K&L Gates partner Michael DeMarco and Miami partner Jeffrey Kucera, over the failure of what once was the country’s fourth-largest bank, run by the family.
