A team from Hogan Lovells led by Michael Hefter and Seth Cohen this week convinced U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York to dismiss a multibillion dollar RICO suit that New York-based hedge fund Kingstown Capital Management and European investors brought against the firm’s clients, CPI Property Group and its majority shareholder, Czech billionaire Rodovan Vitek. The plaintiffs allege that Vitek secretly acquired control over the board of directors of ORCO, a Luxembourg-based real estate development company whose shares are traded on European exchanges, and stripped ORCO of valuable assets to the detriment of minority shareholders like Kingstown.

The 2019 lawsuit followed on the heels of a 2015 suit filed in Luxembourg by a similar group of plaintiffs from which CPI Property Group was previously dismissed. “There can be no serious dispute that Luxembourg is an adequate forum for this dispute,” Cote concluded in her September 4 order.