You're reading: Lawyer for jailed American Fletcher accuses client’s former partners

The lawyer for American Robert T. Fletcher III, who has been jailed for almost five years despite no criminal conviction, says he has proof that his client was defrauded of more than $20,000. Fletcher’s advocate accused two co-founders of the business training company that the three were involved in before Fletcher’s 2008 arrest on suspicion of large scale fraud. 

Criminal lawyer Vitaliy Synychenko showed the
Kyiv Post company registrar documents and a police report that two company
officials at Global System Training had reduced Fletcher’s share capital by more
than $20,000 through forging documents from a June 25, 2008 general
shareholders’ meeting .

Synychenko identified the company’s co-founder,
Oleksandr Vdovenko, as one of the men who benefitted from the alleged forgery.
The Kyiv Post could not reach Vdovenko. Fletcher’s lawyer said Vdovenko also
withdrew some $400,000 from company bank accounts. The lawyer also identified co-founder
Iryna Zakharchuk as another beneficiary of the alleged fraud. Zakharchuk could
not be reached for comment.

In September 2008, Vdovenko announced that he
was sole owner of the company and forbade anyone to use the trademark,
including Fletcher. Police opened a criminal case and kept Vdovenko in custody
for three days before releasing him. Police closed the case without pressing
charges in November 2012, citing lack of evidence.

Company registrar documents show that between
January and September 2008, Fletcher’s ex-wife was removed from the list of
managers authorized to legally represent the company, leaving Vdovenko as the
sole director. They also show Fletcher’s stake being reduced from $25,360 to
$3,170.

Fletcher, 49, and eight Ukrainians are
suspected of committing more than $10 million in fraud by promoting fictitious
business projects while promising high returns on investments. Fletcher, in
addition, is accused of creating and heading an organized crime group and
forgery.

Nearing the five-year mark in jail as legal
proceedings against him drag on, Fletcher faces up to 12 years in prison if
convicted. Kyiv’s Desniansky District Court is hearing the case expected to
last into next year.

He has had different lawyers. The latest one,
Synychenko, appointed in July, has been unable to get Fletcher released on bail.

Referring to himself as a “professor millionaire mentor
on training videos, Fletcher told the Kyiv Post in 2007 that he arrived in
Ukraine in June 2006 in search of a wife. On Oct. 19, 2006, the company was registered
with the state company registrar.

His first trouble with Ukrainian law came on
Nov. 9, 2007 when border guards caught him with a fake Ukrainian passport as he
tried to cross into Russia by train. He was released 10 days later. In June 2008, the Dniprovsky precinct police station in Kyiv determined
Fletcher had an internal Ukrainian passport, which he used to marry
his wife, Olha Dubrovska of Luhansk. He used the same passport to register his
residence in Kyiv on Sept. 29, 2007.

Dubrovska later had the marriage annulled.

The U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 28, 2008
said Fletcher made big
promises about a company he ran in Florida becoming a billion-dollar company.
Those claims turned out to be false, the SEC ruled, and fined Fletcher $5.13
million as the head of ProVision.

He ran ProVision as the chairman and chief
executive from 2003 until 2005, when the company removed him “from all company duties and responsibilities, including board director.” ProVision’s new president and CEO, Hassan (Sam) Kassir, was instructed by the board of directors to shut down all
questionable operations and restructure the company.

At the time Kassir took over, the company was in default on more than $10
million in short-term debt.

The company conducted real estate seminars
but told investors it was expanding into land development, yachts and the
mining of humate in Texas, a mineral used in fertilizer. However, the SEC said
these claims were exaggerated.

In one incident, the SEC said the humate
mine, which the company never actually bought, was worth only $5 million and
far less than the $137 million that the company claimed.

“The SEC’s complaint charges that ProVision
and Fletcher fraudulently raised millions of dollars from investors, and then
Fletcher used the money for personal expenses and to support his lavish
lifestyle, including purchasing jewelry and clothing, and for gambling,” reads
the SEC litigation release by U.S District Judge Alicemarie Stotler.

Kyiv Post
editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].