The brothers José Antonio and Luis Javier Martínez Sampedro, president and board member of the betting and casino company, have been ordered to pay back almost 700,000 euros to Codere for improperly using the corporate card for personal expenses, such as trips to New York, Miami, and Caicos, as well as luxury products and restaurants. In addition, the defendants breached their duty of loyalty by entering into a sublease relationship with Francomar Investments SL (a company owned by them) first for free and then at a below-market price.
On the other hand, Hogan Lovells’ Litigation and Arbitration team, led by partner Jon Aurrekoetxea and counsel José Luis Huerta, has successfully represented Codere (the holding company prior to New Codere, resulting from the financial restructuring of the company) in an arbitration initiated by Jose Antonio Martinez Sampedro and Luis Javier Martinez Sampedro before the ICC International Court of Arbitration.
The International Court of Arbitration has recently notified Codere of the award that resolves the arbitration proceedings filed in 2018 by the Martinez Sampedro family, in which all their claims are dismissed, and they are ordered to pay the legal costs of their claim. The Court of Arbitration has thus confirmed the decisions adopted by the board of directors on 12 January 2018, in which it was agreed to dismiss the Martínez-Sampedro brothers as the main executives of the company.
The Hogan Lovells team that has represented Codere’s interests specialises in complex disputes arising from commercial transactions (acquisition transactions, shareholders’ agreements, and shareholders’ agreements, private equity transactions, joint ventures, etc.) and corporate transactions (mergers, challenges to corporate resolutions, liability actions, etc.), having participated in several of the most relevant shareholder disputes of the last decade.
The Hogan Lovells team has won some of the most prestigious awards in the legal sector internationally. In 2021, it has been recognised in the Band 2 category in Dispute Resolution in Europe, according to Chambers Europe 2021. The practice has more than 700 lawyers worldwide, most of them recognised by the prestigious directories Chambers & Partners, Legal500, and Who’s Who Legal, among others.
