MEDIA MOGUL DUPED INTO SIGNING OVER ASSETS, JUDGE SAYS

A U.S. judge issued a stinging rebuke to a lawyer claiming ownership of several Argentine television companies, finding he deceived Miami media mogul Remigio Angel Gonzalez into signing over the rights. Carlos Eduardo Lorefice Lynch’s “entire case was an attempt to hold Gonzalez to sham documents he knew presented lies,” Delaware Chancery Court Judge Morgan Zurn said Friday. “The court will not be complicit in an illicit scheme, nor will it stand to be a pawn in one.” Lynch, who previously served as Gonzalez’s Argentina representative, sued to assert his claim to a 65 per cent interest in Delaware-incorporated Grupo Belleville Holdings LLC, which holds several Argentine media companies that are part of Gonzalez’s “Albavision” Latin American media empire. The lawyer claimed Gonzalez’s ownership claims were based on fake documents, but the judge said it was the other way around. The judge ruled Gonzalez was the companies’ rightful owner; she said Lynch had “proceeded with unclean hands and in bad faith.”