An Irish Liquidator Plays Cat and Mouse With Russian Jets
A Dublin court has ruled that the assets of a pair of Irish subsidiaries of a Moscow company are fair game for creditors.
Tucked away in offices in London and Dublin, staffers of advisory firm Teneo Inc. devote much of their time to monitoring flight-tracking websites. The goal is to spot aircraft leaving Russia bound for places where authorities might be amenable to grounding the jets and handing them over. The planes in question belong to the European units of a Russian leasing company, and Teneo is working for creditors who say the company owes them almost $2 billion. “We’re taking every step necessary to recover capital,” Teneo says.
A Dublin court last year appointed a pair of Teneo team members as liquidators of GTLK Europe DAC and GTLK Europe Capital DAC. They’re Ireland-based subsidiaries of State Transport Leasing Co. OJSC, a state-owned Russian company better known by its Cyrillic initials, GTLK, which buys commercial jets, ships, trucks and rail cars and leases them to airlines and freight haulers.