The lawsuit is seeking significant damages
A Greek businessman has filed a lawsuit in a Malta court against betting firm Tipico over the alleged forging of clauses in a franchising contract. He is seeking up to €14m ($15.5m) in damages.
Businessman Antonios Stampolidis is representing Chadborn Holdings, a franchise partner of Tipico. The company owns ten Tipico retail locations throughout Austria. Stampolidis is calling on the police to launch an investigation into the matter.
The arrangement between the two parties
The civil lawsuit names Tipico Co. Limited and a former director of the company, Oliver Voigt. Stampolidis is claiming that Tipico terminated their arrangement with no valid legal reason. This led to damages and losses of profit in the range of millions of euro.
Towards the end of 2012, Stampolidis and Tipico were in “huge conflict” regarding a franchise agreement which the two parties had been negotiating.
damages and losses of profit in the range of millions of euro
This saw Stampolidis visit Frankfurt to meet the Tipico marketing director for the German market, Stefan Meurer. They came to an agreement, with Stampolidis saying “I went back and was quite satisfied.”
A dispute about the contract details
Following the verbal agreement, Stampolidis believed he could open a further two stores in Austria. However, on receiving the contract, he realized it included nothing of what they had agreed on.
He went on to amend the document, deleting a number of contentious paragraphs before sending a revised version back to Tipico to be signed. This was sent back to Stampolidis with his own signature as well as Oliver Voigt’s. This latest version of the contract was a cause for issue for Stampolidis, who observed that
The pages where I had deleted the sentences were exchanged. A complete line was actually added in one of the paragraphs.”
Those pages which had been exchanged had a dark black Tipico logo, while the other pages had a faint logo. Stampolidis claims he was asked to sign the contract and send it back due to the color difference between the logos.
Allegations of forgery
Stampolidis alleges that Tipico was not happy about him having deleted sentences in the contract. He believes “they kept my signature and in all the parts where I deleted because I did not agree they changed them in order for the contract to suit them and only them.”
He said Tipico’s legal department was trying to hide the forgery by sending numerous new contracts for Stampolidis to sign. The businessman also claims he was told by a former director of Tipico, Hans Wolfram Kessler, that Stampolidis’s shops in Austria could be forced closed.
Tipico will fight the case
Tipico has denied the allegations, deeming them “completely not true”. The company also noted that both Voigt and Kessler have not been directors for three years leading up to the filing of this civil suit.
According to Tipico, the ending of the contractual partnership between the two parties was “completely different to that reported by the sworn application and it is absolutely not true that the defendant company breached contractual dispositions in some way.”
The case is set to continue.