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Sekai Night & Day club owner sued for $5M by investor
Mario Azodinia also owns Wyld Chld and is accused of defaulting on 17 promissory notes
UPDATE: Court records show this case was dismissed on April 28, 2023
ORIGINAL POST: A $5-million lawsuit has accused one of Houston’s most popular restaurateurs of failing to pay back loans that funded his businesses.
Chicago-based Coxe Investments sued Mario Azodinia, accusing him of defaulting on 17 promissory notes, totalling more than $4 million, for ventures including nightclubs, bars and a nail salon.
The lawsuit mentioned Rose Gold Houston, which it stated is still open but is no longer owned by Azodinia, as well as the Engine Room music venue and the shuttered clubs Draise and Mercy.
Azodinia is the CEO of Sekai Hospitality Services, publicized last year for plans to open “multi-million dollar Vegas-style nightclubs.”
Coxe loaned the money between October 2017 and February 2021, and Azodinia made some of the agreed upon payments, according to the lawsuit. But he hasn’t made any payments for almost two years, despite the success of his ventures, the suit claimed.
The lawsuit alleged that Azodinia defaulted in part because of his ties to a public corruption case.
“Azodinia appears to be preoccupied with a recent FBI search of his home in connection with an ongoing investigation into a bribery scandal involving one of Houston mayor Sylvester Turner’s top aides,” the lawsuit stated.
The FBI searched Azodinia’s apartment in the Bayou Bend towers in August, in connection to the former aide, William-Paul Thomas. Thomas pleaded guilty on July 25 to several federal corruption charges that accused him of accepting bribes to keep businesses open during COVID-19 restrictions in 2020.
Thomas used his position in city government to reclassify bars as restaurants so they could stay open during the lockdown and was offered thousands of dollars in cash bribes. None of the business owners who paid bribes were named in that federal case, Houston Public Media reported.
Azodinia, who is named in the lawsuit as Faramarz Azodinia, hasn’t been charged with any crime, and the FBI never confirmed Azodinia’s connection to the Thomas case, but KTRK pieced it together.