Unknown real estate mogul died in 2009 – now the Supreme Court will decide the fate of the billionaire – E24

Egil A. Braathen, who in the 1980s was named the country’s third real estate magnate by Kapital magazine, died in Gran Canaria in 2009.

One of the latest changes to the media cloud investor’s will, dated March 14, 2002, is at the center of a years-long dispute over the billion-dollar fortune he left behind.

Here Raymond Kalley, who today has an address in South Africa, received 1/16 of the inheritance, approximately NOK 73 million. But Kalley has never received this money, unlike the other probate heirs.

Instead, its potential stake has been withheld and is located in Norway.

This is because the other heirs believe that Kalley has embezzled significant funds from Braathen, confirms executor Ståle Kihle. In the 1990s, Kalley was responsible for several million Braathen crowns, placed in two trusts registered in the Cayman Islands.

Lost in switzerland

At the time of his death, Egil A. Braathen was a Norwegian citizen with registered residence in Switzerland.

The fortune he left behind was partly invested in real estate in Norway, partly in foreign banks, especially in Luxembourg and Switzerland.

To separate Raymond Kalley from Egil A. Braathen’s estate, several of the other heirs brought the validity of the will to Swiss law.

Their case was largely based on a Cayman Islands civil law ruling. He claims that Kalley, in his role as director of the Braathen trusts, has ensured that he himself received $ 350,000 more than he should have received.

The heirs won the case. Based on Norwegian inheritance law, the Swiss court concluded in January 2018 that the testamentary version benefiting Kalley with 1/16 of Braathen’s inheritance is invalid.

Kalley’s attorney, Halvard Helle, believes the Cayman Islands court documents are based on inaccuracies.

– These are things that could never have happened in a Norwegian court. It’s completely unfounded that Kalley got rich at Braathen’s expense, he says.

The case in Switzerland has gone through two courts, but can still be appealed to the country’s Supreme Court and is therefore not legally binding.

Will sue the other heirs

After losing in Switzerland, Kalley went to the Oslo District Court last spring to get the money he thinks he is entitled to. Since it is not possible to sue Swiss-registered heirs in Norway, he filed claims against the other heirs in private.

But the heirs protested. They believed that the Norwegian judiciary could not decide the inheritance case because Braathen was not a resident of Norway when he died.

The heirs won from this in district court, but Kalley took the case to the Court of Appeal, which in May of this year reached the opposite conclusion. The heirs appealed this decision again and now the Supreme Court has decided to consider the case.

If the Supreme Court reaches the same conclusion as the Court of Appeals, it means that Raymond Kalley can take the other heirs to court in Norway with a claim to get his sixteenth of the billion-dollar inheritance.

Kalley’s attorney, Halvard Helle, informs E24 that his client wants clarification in the Supreme Court before it is relevant to comment on the case.

The other heirs do not want media attention and will not comment at all on the case, says attorney and executor Ståle Kihle.

Tax-motivated move to Switzerland

Despite his successful career and considerable wealth, little information is available about Egil A. Braathen.

– Egil never requested or did not want publicity in any way.

The words can be read in Pauline Braathen’s book “Memories from a Marriage”. Here the English widow, who by the way is not part of the case against Raymond Kalley, writes that Egil A. Braathen dropped out of school at age 13 and got a job in a local grocery store in Oslo, where he grew up.

At the age of 22, he opened a country shop in Lørenskog and in 1947 founded his own company, marking the beginning of Braathen’s career as a property developer.

Egil A. Braathen became a real estate investor from the 1950s and in the following decade he was behind the construction of a shopping center and a hotel in Linderud.

His career continued as a purer financier and in 1983, according to Økonomisk Rapport magazine, Braathen was a billionaire, owner of 20 companies and 40 properties.

The year before, he and his wife Pauline had formally moved to Switzerland. According to “Memories of a marriage,” the motive was to pay less taxes.

– She still lived a lot in Oslo, although the lawyers had made sure that she officially lived in Switzerland, writes Pauline Braathen in the book that was published a year after her husband’s death.

One that was close to Braathen

The availability of information on Raymond Kalley is even more limited, and his attorney Halvard Helle does not want to say anymore that he was someone close to Egil A. Braathen.

According to Pauline Braathen’s book, Kalley was close to both of them during the 1990s. In a 1992 session, he is described as Pauline’s advisor at the time, and in 1994 he was the center when Egil A. Braathen felt they had him. tricked into investing more than a million dollars in an American company called The Winner’s Edge UC’WIN System. Corp.

It turned out that the investment restrictions made the ownership shares almost worthless, so Egil A. Braathen responded by going after the man who had convinced him. In the end, Braathen received compensation in the form of property in Florida, a house in West Virginia, and an apartment in the Cayman Islands.

– Egil was not a decent and forgiving man when he was deceived, writes Pauline Braathen about the incident.

Must have gotten rich

The work to recover this money is at the core of the Cayman Islands civil law case, which states that Raymond Kalley has broken with the trust he received as a “trustee” for Braathen.

A 1998 agreement between the two states that Kalley should receive 20 percent of the money they managed to recover. This total eventually reached a million dollars, after the aforementioned properties were sold. But according to the Cayman Islands verdict, Kalley should have made sure to keep more than half the money.

Despite repeated requests, the defendant has never produced documentation showing that the accounts agree with the agreement that he should receive 20 percent, the verdict says.

It concludes that Kalley has enriched himself with more than $ 350,000 belonging to Egil A. Braathen, a finding that, according to Kalley’s attorney Halvard Helle, is based on inaccuracies.

It has a bar code signaling building

Today, Egil A. Braathen’s legacy is visible first and foremost to the residents of Oslo.

The real estate company now called Braathen Eiendom consisted of a wide range of property types in the 2000s, but as a result of rising costs, it decided to sell and focus on a few high-profile buildings.

Braathen Eiendom currently owns only five properties, including three of the high-rise buildings in Bjørvika that were purchased early in the Barcode development. One of them is used in its entirety by the audit firm Deloitte.

The other two properties are also located in Oslo. Gate 2 of Haakon VII houses, among others, Folketrygdfondet and Fondsfinans Kapitalforvaltning, while Alf Bjerckes vei 28–32 Office and Warehouse Building is the largest property in the portfolio, totaling 60,000 square meters.

The group’s properties were valued at NOK 3.91 billion in the 2019 annual accounts.

The company is owned by Anne Lise, Bjørn Anders and Ole Martin Braathen, where the former is Egil A. Braathen’s daughter from his first marriage, while Bjørn Anders and Ole Martin are her son and grandson.

The latter two participate in the appeal before the Supreme Court.