Matthew Browndorf, Chief Executive Officer of Plutos Sama, LLC is advising Manafort on his real estate investments.
Plutos Sama is a self-described “family of companies” including Wilson Keadjian Browndorf (a law firm with offices, impressively, in both Midtown and Times Square (link)) and Rusama Limited, LLC, a crude oil trading company that issued a press release in 2014 regarding its attendance at a Kurdistan-Iraq Oil & Gas Conference (link).
It appears that Browndorf started to negotiate a settlement with Genesis Capital (one of Manafort’s creditors on 377 Union and other properties) without receiving authorization from the bankruptcy court or Yohai.
Another set of unusual facts:
A property that appears to be Browndorf’s residence is owned by DCM-P3, LLC which borrowed over $3 million dollars from private lenders, including two individuals, in August 2016 and September 2016 (in addition to an existing bank mortgage). Familiarly, the aggregate amount borrowed appears to exceed the expected market value of the “34 Black Hawk” property. Two Browndorf-controlled entities, DCM-P8, LLC and DCM-P9, LLC (seemingly in the same series of entities involved in the purchase of the residence referenced above) have been attempting to buy two of Yohai’s Los Angeles properties out of bankruptcy. Around the same time, Browndorf makes the striking hire of Mohit Agarwal, a Cambridge educated banker at Deutshe Bank. Agarwal was announced as the Chief Risk Officer of Distressed Capital Management (another Plutos Sama company) on September 13, 2016, the day after Manafort borrows $3.5 million from an entity connected to Spruce Capital. Mohit Agarwal, working out of Distressed Capital Management’s London office, subsequently executes the term sheets to purchase the two Los Angeles properties connected to Yohai out of bankruptcy.