Svyatoslav Mangushev To Pay Igor Zorin In Trump Palace Case

A Miami-Dade Circuit judge ordered a Russian investor to pay $2.3 million to former Russian government official Igor Zorin in a dispute over the sale of the LLC that owned a condo at Trump Palace in Sunny Isles Beach.

Svyatoslav Mangushev was hit with the default judgment on July 5 after Judge Lisa Walsh found he repeatedly violated court orders, failed to comply with discovery and orchestrated a scheme to delay trial through false medical claims.

Walsh struck Mangushev’s defense pleadings and also sanctioned his attorney, George Lambert, after finding Mangushev committed fraud on the court and Lambert engaged in litigation misconduct.

Two years ago, Zorin sued Mangushev, alleging the investor failed to pay $2.3 million under an agreement to acquire Trump Palace 5507 LLC, the entity that owned Unit 5507 at Trump Palace.

The 55-story Trump Palace at 18101 Collins Avenue was developed by Gil Dezer’s Dezer Development under a licensing agreement with Donald Trump’s Trump Organization, which licensed the Trump name and brand. It was completed in 2005.

Zorin previously served as deputy head of Russia’s Federal Communications Agency and later led the state-owned Russian Networks of Broadcasting and Alerting, which operates emergency broadcast systems and provides sound for Moscow’s annual Victory Day military parade in Red Square. He has reportedly spent millions on South Florida real estate, which include condos in Trump Palace.

After striking Mangushev’s pleadings as a sanction, the court admitted the allegations in Zorin’s complaint.

According to the complaint, Zorin alleged Mangushev never paid the agreed $2.3 million for the LLC, yet named himself as its manager, transferred the property to an affiliated entity and received the proceeds from its subsequent $1.8 million sale in 2021, while Zorin received nothing.

Walsh found Mangushev breached the agreement by failing to pay the required $580,000 deposit, the remaining $1.7 million due by closing and not registering the deal with Miami-Dade County’s property appraiser. She entered a default final judgment awarding Zorin $2.3 million, plus prejudgment interest dating back to July 10, 2020.

The judge also found that Mangushev obtained the contract through false representations and false pretenses that constituted fraud while acting in a fiduciary capacity, and that his extraction of the property’s mortgage and sale proceeds constituted embezzlement.

According to the order, Mangushev and Lambert repeatedly sought to postpone the trial by claiming Mangushev had cancer and required urgent surgery. Walsh found those claims were unsupported by medical records and contradicted by testimony from Mangushev’s own physicians, who testified he was physically and mentally capable of standing trial.

The order also cites testimony from one of Mangushev’s physicians that alleged Mangushev visited his office during the trial, offered him a bottle of brandy and to pay his legal fees in exchange for favorable testimony. The physician allegedly rejected both offers and ended the doctor-patient relationship, according to the order.

Walsh also found Mangushev repeatedly failed to appear for trial despite court orders requiring him to do so. She said on one of those days Mangushev instead attended a two-hour bankruptcy court hearing in person while failing to appear in her courtroom.

The order details what Walsh described as a yearslong pattern of misconduct, including repeated discovery violations, disregard for court orders, unpaid sanctions and frivolous filings that delayed the case.

Walsh called the litigation an “outlier” and said that Mangushev’s conduct would “reward anarchy” and undermine the administration of justice if allowed to continue.

Lambert declined to comment.