Treading deep water
Donald LeBlanc, president of Dessaport and director at EuroPort, and his partner Joseph D'Andrea have been engaged in a legal struggle with the Port Authority of Gdańsk (ZMPG) and Poland's Treasury Ministry since 2002. The investors claim they have suffered losses totalling $183 (zł.415) million as a result of ZMPG's attempts to annul EuroPort's 25-year lease on the pier and adjacent land. The issue has now been taken to Brussels.
"The owners of EuroPort and their advisors believe their complaint to the European Commission," said their formal brief to Brussels, "that in order to have a fair settlement of the situation, authorities outside Poland ... must participate and fully examine the evidence."
LeBlanc said that discriminatory and hostile actions aimed at EuroPort - including intimidation by armed agents - prevented the investors from securing financing needed to complete their project, which was aimed to be the first deep-water port facility for the import and export of agricultural products for Poland and neighboring countries.
"We've got a verdict confirming that the termination of the tenancy contract was legal and we expect the Court of Arbitration at the Polish Chamber of Commerce to order the tenant, EuroPort, to give us the land in autumn. We will then be able to look for a new tenant to invest in the area," Ryszard Strzyżewicz, president of ZMPG, told Puls Biznesu.
EuroPort began in early 1996, a short time after signing a deal with ZMPG in December 1995. Since then, the company has testified before two arbitration hearings in Warsaw, instigated an investigation with the Prosecutor's Office in Gdańsk, appealed to the Central Anticorruption Bureau in Warsaw and made contact with the Treasury Ministry through both the Canadian and American embassies.
