How did Tjaša Andree Prosenc fraudulently appropriate an apartment and commercial premises?

The notorious lawyer and member of the communist elite Tjaša Andree Prosenc, many years ago, by means of fraud, appropriated an apartment and two commercial premises for herself and her son from the legitimate owner of the building at Wolfova 1 in Ljubljana. With the help of her connections in legal and judicial networks she carried this out in such a way that the only legitimate owner Federico Pignatelli is still fighting the legal mills. However, such cases never prescribe, because the legitimate owner of property is protected by the concept of revendication.

But we will get to that point. First, a brief summary of the story. The daughters of Emerik Mayer, based on testimony from twenty members of partisan families whom he hid and protected from the occupier during the war, managed at the end of the 1980s to rehabilitate their father, and on that basis the state returned the building at Wolfova 1 in Ljubljana to the family. Heirs Federico and Luigi Pignatelli decided to buy out the shares of the other relatives and comprehensively arrange the property, which represents a very important emotional heritage for the family.

Because they were foreign citizens, the legislation at the time did not allow them, as private individuals, to buy out the shares from their relatives. Therefore, in 1993 they established the company Eurocapital and appointed Federico Pignatelli as the legal representative. Because, under the legislation at the time, it was necessary in addition to the legal representative, who was a foreigner, to also appoint an authorized local person, they named Igorja Tomažiča as procurator. They hired lawyer Tjaša Andree Prosenc for legal counsel.

Five years later, in 1998, both brothers gave the lawyer Tjaša Andree Prosenc very clear instructions by written powers of attorney, which were authenticated in the USA and in Italy, for the notarial certification of the minutes of the company's general meeting and for the registration of statutory changes in the court register. The essential task was to keep Federico Pignatelli as the sole representative in the register and to remove Igorja Tomažiča as procurator. Their lawyer, however, cheated them and, in addition, illegitimately and unlawfully changed the name of the legal representative in the court register. Instead of Federico Pignatelli, who had been the only legitimate director throughout the company's existence, she entered his mother Doris Mayer Pignatelli in the register as the representative. It is important that the mother officially did not have the surname Pignatelli and that therefore no personal document existed under that name, yet the lawyer nevertheless managed to record her in the court register under that name as the company's representative in an unlawful manner.

This part of the story has already been described in detail. What matters, though, is what followed, because that explains why the lawyer risked so much. The extraordinary risk was first that she forged the minutes of the company meeting on the basis of falsified documents and with the help of notary Miro Košak. Then she risked even more at the next step, when she circumvented all obstacles at the registration court. There, on 7.6.1999, she entered Doris Mayer Pignatelli in the register as the sole representative and, based on a handwritten note, removed the only legitimate representative from the register, that is Federico Pignatelli. No resolution on dismissal or any resignation statement by Federico was attached, who therefore remained the only legitimate representative of the company throughout its existence.

As a businessman who managed a number of deals around the world, Federico never even thought that his lawyer, despite all the state safeguards from the notary to the court register, could cheat him in such a corrupt and illegal way. He was convinced that his lawyer, whom he paid well, was acting at all times in accordance with his instructions and looking after his interests. The lawyer, of course, assured him that she had carried out all procedures according to the agreement. And for years she persistently lied to Federico and continued to manage the company's paperwork, while falsifying documents on the basis of the unlawful change in the court register.

And Doris Mayer never knew that she was recorded in the register as the legitimate representative of the company. It never occurred to her. The lawyer, however, knew very well why she made this so risky move. Tjaša Andree Prosenc was, besides handling the liabilities for the company Eurocapital and its director Federico Pignatelli, also managing numerous denationalization proceedings for Doris Mayer. In the next step of the fraud she abused precisely the overlap of all these responsibilities, and above all she abused the enormous trust that Doris Mayer placed in her.

The elderly lady no longer spoke Slovenian well, which some attributed to the severe trauma from the horrors she experienced at the end of the war and during the escape across the Alps, which she barely survived. Those events left deep consequences, which Tjaša Andree Prosenc maliciously exploited. The lady completely trusted her. By deception the lawyer first had her client sign documents on the basis of which the lawyer and her son bought the apartment in which the lady lived. When, after some time, she realized that the legitimate owners had not discovered this move, she continued. The elderly Doris Mayer, in the role of the fictitious representative of the company Eurocapital, was made to sign a power of attorney for the lawyer's accomplice Peter Krisper to sell two commercial premises on the ground floor of the building to the lawyer's son Gregor Prosenc. The payment for them was never made to an official bank account; instead Gregor Prosenc claimed in court that he had paid Peter Krisper €400,000 in cash!

All three therefore acted in this fraud as an organized group, and the lawyer's son enriched himself on that basis with the commercial premises, where he currently runs a shop selling suitcases and handbags. The dispossession of Eurocapital's property can never prescribe, because it is based on the void entry of the illegitimate company representative in the court register.

Because the entry of Doris Mayer in the court register was null and void, which has already been determined, all actions they committed on the basis of that first move in the described fraud are also null and void. First the entry in the court register is nullified, and the power of attorney and, of course, the sale contract executed on the basis of the initial forged documents with which Tjaša Andree Prosenc began this criminal story are also void. The only legitimate representative of Eurocapital, Federico Pignatelli, did not participate in any of these steps. And as stated, such matters never prescribe because of revendication.

Because of the swamp of Slovenian lawyering and the judiciary, Federico Pignatelli will still have to continue fighting for justice for his family. But Slovenia is part of the Western world, and so it is only a question of time when and by what procedure Federico as the legitimate owner of the expropriated properties will win justice for his family and thus justice in this story overall.

Therefore, after he annulled the lawyer's first fraudulent act in the court register in 2015 and restored the legitimate state by annulling the entry of Doris Mayer as Eurocapital's representative, Federico, as the sole director who was never dismissed from that position, now demands the following steps from the Slovenian legal system:

1. a declaration of nullity of the power of attorney issued by the illegitimate director of the company,
2. a declaration of nullity of the sale contract,
3. a declaration of nullity of the entries of illegitimate changes in the land register and the restoration of the previous land register state, and
4. the handing over of the property into his legitimate possession.

These demands are the natural continuation of removing the consequences of the fraud after the unlawful state in the court register was rectified. Of course, law is one thing and the practice of the Slovenian judiciary is another. In the first few decisions they avoid the inevitable concept of revendication and with formal excuses hinder the pursuit of justice for a family that was already subjected to great suffering by the authorities of the time. Some