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Home » Oquendo lawyer ‘going after’ Terek / Dugazaev for ‘criminal contempt’

Oquendo lawyer ‘going after’ Terek / Dugazaev for ‘criminal contempt’

On April 7, 2015, District Court Judge Ronnie Abrams of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Oquendo vs. Terek Box Event (Case no. 14-cv-9835) preliminarily enjoined Terek Box Event from “promoting or managing Ruslan Chagaev in any bout for the World Boxing Association (“WBA”) World Heavyweight Championship, unless Mr. Chagaev first shall have defended his WBA heavyweight title against Fres Oquendo or vacated the WBA title.”

In response to the press release, Fres Oquendo’s lawyer, Judd Burstein, has requested a conference with Judge Abrams for permission to make a motion to have the Court appoint a private prosecutor to go after Terek and Dugazaev for criminal contempt — which can lead to six months in jail – due to their “openly and contemptuously flouting [the Court’s] preliminary injunction.”

Burstein is also seeking a TRO barring Terek “from commencing or continuing a litigation in Moscow that, in essence, asks a Russian Court to invalidate the preliminary injunction that the Court has issued.”

In yesterday’s release, Dugazaev states that “According to the bout agreement the jurisdiction regarding this fight is in Moscow. In addition to that Oquendo received the full agreed purse of $225,000.”

What Dugazaev fails to mention is that in order to induce Oquendo to leave his sick wife and newborn child and travel to Chechnya for a fight he was not mentally or physically prepared for, the earlier bout agreement Dugazaev referred to was replaced with a new bout agreement with a $1 million purse, a rematch clause and a clause designating New York courts for disputes.

Although Terek at first claimed that it never signed the $1 million bout agreement, during the trial, Terek’s lawyer, Richard Simon, subsequently conceded that it had been:

THE COURT: Let me ask you one more question. Are you conceding the validity of the July [$1 million] contract?

MR. SIMON: What we’re doing is we’re saying that whoever signed that, I mean, Malte [Muller Michaelis] or somebody in his presence had signed it and returned it, I’m saying that to the extent that they could bind Terek, it would be a contract between Terek and the plaintiff [Fres Oquendo].