Chicago investor Igor Gabal is hitting back after his business partner Ruben Espinoza sued him for allegedly misappropriating a $6.2 million insurance payout meant for the office building they co-own at 300 West Adams in the Loop.
Espinoza accused Gabal of funneling money from a shared business account between himself and Espinoza to an account controlled solely by Gabal, in a lawsuit filed earlier this month.
Gabal’s rebuttal denied Espinoza’s claim that he mishandled the insurance payout and stated that he opened the separate bank account to protect the property’s revenues from Espinoza.
Gabal alleges that over the past year, Espinoza withdrew $1.5 million from the partners’ shared business account without Gabal’s permission and did not respond to repeated requests to stop.
As a result they were unable to pay property taxes on the building in 2023 and 2024, Gabal’s filing claims.
Espinoza, Gabal and Gabal’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
Initially, the building purchase seemed like a golden opportunity. It made headlines for selling at a steep discount of just $4 million, or $17 per square foot in late 2023.
Gabal has said he wanted to focus on attracting office tenants looking for spaces with a smaller footprint. He also considered converting the first two floors into a data center.
But the property was almost immediately tied up in legal trouble. Shortly after the sale closed, investors Chris Hansen and John Thomas sued Gabal for allegedly cutting them out of a plan to buy the office building together. Gabal prevailed in September when a judge dismissed the case.
Meanwhile, Espinoza has been dealing with legal troubles of his own.
He faced a slew of lawsuits last year alleging he owed people involved in properties throughout the Chicago area amounts ranging from $300,000 to $3 million. Three of those four lawsuits, however, were dismissed.