A US investment adviser has filed legal proceedings, seeking judgment for $500,000 (€474,890) against Cork businessman Allan Beechinor, the co-founder of failed tech company Altada, and damages for breach of contract and fraud, according to court documents.
A subsidiary of Rocktop Partners – a Texas-based firm that led a $11.5 million funding round in 2021, putting Altada on course to achieve a $1 billion valuation, giving it “unicorn”. status – initiated proceedings against Mr Beechinor and Oysterhaven Ventures in the High Court on Tuesday.
Oysterhaven is the Cork-registered entity in which Mr Beechinor and his wife and co-founder Niamh Parker, held their stake in the tech company. Altada collapsed into receivership and then liquidation in early 2023, just over a year after it raised the money from Rocktop along with Elkstone Partners and Enterprise Ireland.
Court records reveal that Rocktop Arlington has filed a plenary summons in the case, commencing the action over the dispute.
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The company is suing Mr Beechinor, who did not respond to a request for comment, for “judgment in the sum of $500,000″, which represents “repayment of a sum advanced to the defendants”.
Rocktop, which has been approached for comment, is also seeking damages for “breach of contract and/or fraud”, the documents reveal, as well as its costs in the legal action.
Rocktop’s claim relates to sums advanced to Oysterhaven separate from its investment in Altada as part of the 2021 funding round, it is understood.
The US investment firm, which filed a plenary summons in the case earlier this month, is represented by Horwich Farrelly Ireland. The law firm is also representing American financier Jeffrey Leo in a separate legal case against Mr Beechinor and podcast host Keith Walsh, according to a plenary summons filed earlier this month.
Posts published on social media site X, formerly Twitter, show correspondence written by lawyers from Horwich Farrelly complaining about allegedly defamatory statements made by Mr Beechinor about Mr Leo on a newly created podcast platform called Moth News.
An early investor in Altada, Mr Leo was also a creditor of the company at the time it ran into difficulty. Ultimately, he applied to the High Court to have a liquidator – accountant John Healy of Kirby Healy Chartered Accountants – appointed to Altada in late 2022.
Mr Healy’s investigations into the collapse of the company are ongoing.
In an affidavit filed in the High Court in early 2023 as part of the initial liquidation proceedings, the liquidator said the company’s deficit to its creditors at the end of 2022 may “substantially exceed” €10 million. But when the creditor deficit is added to the €11.5 million Altada raised in a funding round in September 2021 it could exceed €20 million.
He also said in his affidavit that Altada’s directors, Mr Beechinor and Ms Parker, had “perpetrated a fraud” on the company in relation to a decision to draw down a €500,000 loan in September 2022.
Altada is also the subject of an ongoing Garda investigation by detectives attached to the State’s corporate crime watchdog.
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