Former Mansion Bet CEO, Karel Manasco, has been handed a 12-month custodial sentence over a contempt of court charge as the legal battle between him and his former employer escalates.
Manasco failed to appear at court, however, he was represented by counsel, with a warrant for the arrest of Manasco previously being issued after he failed to appear in court during a previous session on 9 April.
At the heart of the case involving Manasco are allegations of financial misconduct and accusations that he failed to comply with asset freezing orders.
The sentence comes as a result of Manasco being found to have made a false statement in a witness statement, as well as removing or diminishing assets from the jurisdiction in his name to the sole name of his wife in an account held in Spain.
The transferring of funds meant that Manasco was in breach of a worldwide freezing order.
The judge emphasised that “this contempt is so serious that only a custodial sentence will suffice”.
Issuing the outcome of the case, the judge stated: “In a democratic society underpinned by the rule of law, court injunctions must be obeyed. A party who has lost a case is entitled to appeal, or to disagree with the result, or to criticise the decision. But they are not entitled to disobey a court injunction. Nobody is above the law.
“Nobody can pick and choose which laws, or injunctions they obey and which they do not. Even if a person is convinced that an injunction was wrongly granted, or is contrary to their views, or is contrary to what they regard as the weight of the evidence, they must comply with the injunction unless or until it is discharged. They are not entitled to stand as a judge in their own cause.”
Manasco has taken issue with his treatment during the case, stating that he feels he has been treated unfairly throughout the process. However, these claims were dismissed by the Supreme Court in Gibraltar.
In a previous development, Manasco was told to pay more than €2.5m to Mansion Group, after it was found that the funds had been obtained illegally from the firm.
Central to the issue was the payment of lucrative consultancy fees from Mansion Group to White Wizard Media (WWML), with Mansion making the case that the consultancy firm in question had provided no service to the operator.
In total, there were 14 invoices from WWML to Mansion that were accrued, totalling a fee of €2,508,035.36 made between 10 August 2018 to 13 June 2019.
Mansion is alleging that through these payments, Manasco transferred money into offshore jurisdictions and benefited personally. The former CEO has continued to challenge these claims.
It ran alongside a separate case against Manasco in which the court also ruled in favour of Mansion Group regarding fees paid to a KM consultancy firm totalling £127,073.28.
As a result of the legal battle between the two parties and the accusations levelled against Manasco, in February last year, the Gibraltar courts froze £5m worth of Manasco’s assets.
This decision was taken following allegations that Manasco had paid himself bonuses and personal payments that he shouldn’t have.
Manasco had stated that he felt judicial bias, adding that off the back of the Worldwide Freezing Order there was “antipathy and hostility towards him in subsequent rulings.”
He claimed that the freezing order “was used by the Claimants to indicate that I was dishonest and has continued to be so used, I am advised by my legal representative, as a means to attack my integrity and to punish me with baseless contempt proceedings, which still hang over me.
He added: The judge ought not to have publicly given a finding of evidence of dishonesty until he had heard the case on its merits, knowing full well the devastating effects which it would have. From this moment on, the judge has shown an antipathy and hostility toward me that is inconsistent with his role requiring impartiality.”
