One picture can speak volumes, as we know. The telecom tower dispute that has pitched Goldman Sachs and supporting New York arbitrators into conflict with the court rulings of multiple Latin American countries contains an album of such images.Also, copious documentation that has left the judiciary in those various countries scratching their heads over a seemingly slam dunk series of rulings coming out of New York that, against much evidence, appear designed to put one of the key communications infrastructure companies in the region firmly into the hands of Goldman Sachs and its affiliates.The company in question is Terra Towers, till recently a thrusting Latin American construction company, controlled by a youthful Guatemalan entrepreneur who pushed into the forefront of the strategic telecoms business as a builder and owner of internet communications towers across Central America and beyond. The sector is a growing multi billion dollar concern involving key issues of national sovereignty.(left to right) Carol Echeverria ‘CT COO’, Adam Schacter ‘CT Legal Counsel’, Jorge Gaitan ‘CT CEO’One of many telling images in the available document trove is a photograph featuring a Miami lawyer, Adam Schacter, at the time recently appointed as legal counsel to a company representing a critical Joint Venture between Terra Towers and a Private Equity outfit, the Ohio based Peppertree Capital Management (PPT), posing between a couple at an eatery in New York.On his either side are the purported CEO of the Joint Venture, the Guatemalan, Jorge Gaitan, and Gaitan’s appointed COO, Carol Echeverria. The date is October 5th 2021 and the trio look convivial and relaxed.The joint venture company, named Continental Towers, was incorporated as a paper holding entity in the BVI in 2015 with two directors from Peppertree on the board and two from Terra Towers. The shareholders are now in legal deadlock, hence the engagement of Mr Schacter as a neutral representative for the company.Following their refreshments, the two senior office holders and their company lawyer linked arms for a second joint ‘selfie’ in front of a picture window looking out over a floodlight night-time cityscape with distinctive landmarks. It appears to have been taken by Gaitan with each of the men laying a friendly arm over Ms Echeverria (see featured picture above).Schacter’s photo of ‘CEO’ Jorge Gaitan and ‘COO’ Carole EcheverriaThen, according to the photo sequence, Schacter turned into the photographer capturing the other two, again in the exact same spot and took several shots as the married CEO planted a lingering kiss on the upturned lips of his equally married COO.It is a picture that has raised several new dimensions in the middle of a tense dispute that was being adjudicated at that time between the Latin American and US parties within that company.Nor is it the only one. This photo is just one of many later discovered then widely distributed by Gaitan’s infuriated wife, who is seeking a divorce and the return of her three children whom Gaitain had removed into his own exclusive custody using high-powered lawyers. Evidence shows the lawyers were funded in these and a growing slew of other matters thanks to the active engagement of Mr Schacter.Dozens of alleged holiday trysts funded from company expenses are recorded in hundreds of photos from Gaitan’s phone (extracted by his wife)Mrs Gaitan discovered scores of similar romantic clinches featured between her husband and Ms Echeverria in holiday spots around the region and in the US on her husband’s phones and computers (eg above).Jibes against Jorge Hernandez (JH) and his lawyers Rodriguez & Kirby during an online Arbitration slotMore to the point, these were found together with telling texts and messages derived from a ‘CT Arbitration’ WhatsApp Chat Group, involving the ‘neutral’ Schacter, Gaitan, Echeverria and another company lawyer, Jean Paul Dechamps, which have arguably shown bias towards Peppertree/Goldman Sachs and undermined those companies’ claims and accusations made against Terra in the litigation, certainly according to the lawyers for Mr Hernandez.The mound of texts include statements indicating collusion with Peppertree lawyers in the conduct of the litigation such as:“[Dechamps] Email looks good. We should send it asap so PPT can use it in their submission”and:“[Gaitan] Adam, it is important you tell Ungar [PPT counsel] that we strongly demand from them to ask for our restoration into the company operation… about proactive actions, that Mr Gaitan and Ms Echaverria are more than happy they reach out to our personal lawyer from Carrillo law.. ”Neutral or in favour of Goldman Sachs?Background Of A Takeover BattleContinental Towers (CT) is a holding entity incorporated in the British Virgin Islands to represent the shared interest of Peppertree Capital Management (PPT) which had invested $125 million to buy 45% of the equity of Terra Towers and a related chunk of Mr Henandez’s businesses in 2015 in order to help fund their growth.Communications InfrastructureAs part of that arrangement PPT had insisted on introducing its own funder, Goldman Sachs, into the shareholding structure with a 5% interest and observer status on the equally divided board between Peppertree and Terra Towers.Henandez’s lawyers had resisted that move at the time, warning repeatedly that the last minute request to insert the powerful bank into the ownership structure would allow Goldman Sachs to wield undue influence as a lender, allowing it to close down or take over the concern. However, PPT had made their belated suggestion a condition of the deal.By the time of the cosy New York meal in October 2021 the parties had seriously fallen out over the very scenario which had been warned of, with Mr Hernandez accusing Peppertree/ Goldman Sachs of having acted in bad faith in making the investment, which his lawyers now characterised as a clear and calculated attempt to infiltrate his businesses in order to squeeze him out and take it over for a fraction of its true value.Court papers submitted by Terra Towers detail an alleged immediate campaign by the new minority shareholders to exert their influence to control and undermine the company with an ultimate alleged purpose of executing a virtually cost-free takeover by squeezing out Mr Hernandez.Tactics included burdensome credit agreements demanded with Goldman Sachs (rejected) followed by deadlocking the board to prevent the company from fulfilling its contracts and engaging in new business, say the lawyers. It culminated in an attempt to force Terra to accept a pre-negotiated sale process drawn up by Goldman Sachs and Peppertree to one of the bank’s other client telecom companies, with which Peppertree had covertly organised a new joint shareholding arrangement.The sale process laid out by Peppertree/Goldman Sachs threatened, say Hernandez’s lawyers, to land Terra Towers with major hidden costs and a minuscule residual profit compared to a $600m offer Hernandez had earlier managed to obtain from a third party potential buyer for Continental Towers – a deal they claimed had been nixed by these minority shareholders with their hidden agenda. Instead, the offer floated by the PPT/Goldman Sachs with their secret ally (a US company called Torrecom) was a mere $400m, which stood to be whittled down under the sales process they had drawn up.The wider objective, according to Hernandez’s lawyers, being for Goldman Sachs to snatch further control of the heavily strategic and hugely profitable telecoms infrastructure network in Latin America, into which the pejoratively dubbed ‘Vampire Squid’ had already embedded itself through several further rival affiliates – and all for a rock bottom price at the expense of the business the local businessman had developed.The Peppertree/Goldman Sachs retort was that Mr Hernandez, in making these protests and the demand that he as majority shareholder should control the sales process by at least naming an independent bank to manage it, was unreasonably opposing any sale.The matter had been with the New York AAA/ICDR arbitration court since February 2021 and the head of the Tribunal, Marc Goldstein, had controversially ruled that a sale must first be executed before he would entertain any of the complaints by Terra: thereby ignoring that the board was deadlocked over who should call the shots on such a sale, and the question over how Terra might gain compensation for the losses to its businesses caused by the alleged sabotage once any sale had been completed.As the failure to thereby agree a sale dragged into months then years, the Tribunal squarely blamed Terra for being the obstacle, in line with the accusations of Peppertree/Goldman Sachs, and started issuing orders and financial penalties for ‘non-compliance’. Lawyers’ fees and other costs started to build up and were contested.Terra Towers consistently found itself the losing party in every application to the court: barred from discovery, barred from bringing evidence, barred from bringing witnesses and then penalised for disobeying orders it complained it cannot practically perform – of which more later.These rulings were perhaps predictably backed by the local district court in Southern New York (where Goldman Sachs is based) largely on the routine assumption that those who sign up to arbitration should abide by it. In March last year the arbitration tribunal awarded PPT/Goldman Sachs a staggering $354 million in costs and damages on the grounds of Terra’s ‘non-compliance’ a judgement that was upheld by the SDNY court the following month.British based arbitration lawyer Jean Paul Dechamps (centre), also hired by Jorge Gaitan (without agreement from Terra Towers), with Jorge Gaitan (left) and Adam Schacter (right)Objective Legal CounselIn the meantime, matters have unfolded very differently in the jurisdictions of Latin America, where the sprawling business of Terra Towers has spawned assets and subsidiaries across several countries, including Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama and Peru (the only asset within US jurisdiction is Mr Henandez’s private residential property worth several million).In these countries investigations have leaned increasingly in favour of Terra Towers’ concerns instead, culminating in the incarceration of Jorge Gaitan and his father last April, and the issuing of INTERPOL Red Notice arrest warrants by El Salvador for the Peppertree Directors in November.Significantly, in October, the Guatemalan court ordered the freezing of the New York Arbitration ruling over Terra assets in that country pending the outcome of its own criminal proceedings against Jorge Gaitan and Carol Echevarria (who was herself arrested, incarcerated and then bailed in June).A reason for this discrepancy appears to be that these local jurisdictions have considered matters that were deliberately excluded from the arbitration whose Chairman Marc Goldstein had unusually determined that the company must first be sold before complaints were heard or discovery allowed.Thus, as events unfolded and new evidence came to light, the various Latin American investigations got underway, whilst the New York Tribunal focused on the sale and ruled all other matters as being irrelevant to that objective – then worse, unilaterally determining a growing body of serious allegations to be, self-evidently, manufactured lies by Terra Towers: “What occurred […] in this proceeding has turned out to have been a multi-faceted effort by Respondents to present to this Tribunal and to the Company’s Board a false narrative of misconduct and criminality by Mr. Gaitan and Ms. Echeverria” in order to gain a “tactical advantage in this arbitration.” [Tribunal’s 2nd Partial Award ruling, 12th August 2022]Faced with the undermining of its own judgements by domestic Latin American court rulings, the foreign New York based Tribunal has moreover ordered Terra Towers to halt all its local criminal and civil complaints and withdraw from any proceedings that have contradicted its own findings, thereby creating a battle of jurisdictions between a private American arbitration panel and several Latin American countries who have now been implied by that Tribunal to be inadequate or corrupt.Is this a matter of US ‘uber alles’ when it comes to jurisdiction, one court appointed official representing the threatened interests of some 2,000 workers across the company asked Sarawak Report? “This case is legal colonisation or legal imperialism infringing in the sovereignty of independent countries“. The case where the New York courts have backed the city’s top bank against a beleaguered Latin American business could fast become a cause celebre!Kidnap vs Globetrotting on Expenses – Competing VictimhoodAt the beginning, a resolution had looked more hopeful. Mr Schacter had drawn up an initial Framework Agreement to govern his role as counsel for the BVI joint venture holding entity (an offshore shell company) in the immediate aftermath of the arbitration initiated by Peppertree/Goldman Sachs.This positioned himself and CT executives (whose actual jobs involved working for Terra’s subsidiary companies) as neutral arbiters to represent the company as a whole, without favouring either of the rival parties who were now at loggerheads having been forced into arbitration by the minority shareholders Peppertree/Goldman Sachs.The Framework Agreement was also predicated on Schacter accepting Mr Gaitain as his sole boss in his capacity as the ‘Continental Towers CEO’ who had formally been designated to hire him.On the surface all seemed correct. An initial Shareholder Agreement had indeed designated Mr Gaitan as the CEO in 2015, therefore lawyers working for Terra Towers, who had not been party to intervening developments, did not immediately question the matter – they signed the agreement in March 2021.‘Fake’ CEO & COO!However, just as Gaitan and Echaverria were cosying up to Schacter in New York those Terra legal staff realised their mistake with the final arrival of incorporation documents from local lawyers in Guatemala.These showed that in May 2016, at the insistence of Peppertree directors themselves (Howard Mandel and Ryan Lepene who reportedly considered Mr Gaitan did not exhibit sufficient qualities to represent the company), he had been replaced as CEO by one of the Terra Directors, Alberto Arzu, through a unanimous vote of the board!Email from PPT lawyers at Thompson Hine showing Gaitan was demoted from CEO to COO in 2016This demotion of Gaitan to COO is clearly reflected in the BVI corporate records which also registers that change:BVI company record as accessed in 2025Following the initiation of the aggressive arbitration battle in March 2021, Mr Arzu had opted to retire. He was replaced as a Terra director but there was no replacement for the nominal role of CEO, which needed the agreement of the divided shareholders.By the time Terra lawyers realised in mid-October that Mr Gaitan was acting as an imposter (as they saw it) they had come to suspect that he was colluding with Peppertree. Certainly, the failure of Peppertree to point out that Adam Schacter’s Framework Agreement had been faulty in citing Jorge Gaitan as CEO is puzzling if not suspicious.After all, Peppertree’s own submissions to force the arbitration back in February of that year had correctly cited Mr Arzu as being the CEO and not Jorge Gaitan. There was therefore no question that Peppertree knew that Mr Gaitan was not approved, yet they failed to point the matter out and subsequently argued, with the backing of the arbitration panel, that the lack of appointment didn’t matter because the wording of the Framework Agreement had effectively re-appointed him.Except, the rules of the company require unanimous appointment by the board – and Terra Towers directors no longer had faith in Mr Gaitan. Likewise, they rejected Mr Gaitan’s decision to appoint his girlfriend, Ms Echeverria, to his own former position as COO, which was among his first actions in the job. She actually held a more junior role in a Terra subsidiary.Equally, Terra Towers rejected Jorge Gaitan’s separate retainer of another high-flying (therefore costly) arbitration lawyer, Jean Paul Dechamps, given they had not even been notified of the expensive decision (let alone agreed to it) and plainly regarded Dechamps as being partial to Peppertree/Goldman Sachs.Meanwhile, Terra Towers management had come to suspect that the determination by Peppertree/Goldman Sachs to retain Mr Gaitan owed to a developing relationship between them over past several months as the takeover battles had developed.They considered those suspicions bolstered, for example, by their discovery of messages such as the below playful interchange revealing he had visited the firm’s headquarters in Chagrin Falls Ohio over a year previously and bantered with Peppertree director John Ranieri:Cycling in Chagrin Falls Sept 2020Likewise, major business investments he had not declared to his own bosses, which he secretly and illegally initiated through Terra Towers’ Panama subsidiaries, were found to have been known to his pals at Peppertree, specifically John Ranieri:August 2020 – Terra Towers say Jorge Gaitan had been initiating secret developments by its subsidiaries with the support of Peppertree directors a year before the arbitration action John Ranieri and his assistant at Peppertree, Caroline Moore, share midday drinks with Gaitan and Echeverria at their HQ in Chagrin Falls, OhioAgain, prior to the October 2021 meeting with lawyer Adam Schacter in New York, Gaitan together with Echeverria had once again visited Ranieri in Chagrin falls, according to the photo evidence, dated 18th August 2021.Events following the get together would result in a watershed crisis (or from the opposite perspective a manufactured drama) at Terra Towers, which would have a permanent and damaging effect on the reputation of Chairman Jorge Hernandez in the eyes of the arbitration panel and become the basis for a slew of prejudicial rulings, followed by increasingly punitive sanctions for alleged non-compliance with those rulings.‘Harassment’ Of Jorge Gaitan The months of September and October 2021, following the Chagrin Falls meeting, saw a slide into toxic allegations that would underpin the later $354 million award against Terra Towers (effectively the hand over of the company to Goldman Sachs’ client co-shareholders Peppertree) – likewise the criminal complaints that would enmesh Peppertree in charges of fraud in Latin America.Jorge Gaitan would later state that he began to bear the brunt of resentment from his boss, Jorge Hernandez, over his determination to be even handed as CEO of Continental Towers in keeping with the terms of the Framework Agreement. In particular, Adam Schacter had issued an email to Terra’s subsidiaries ordering them not to continue work on projects not unanimously agreed by all shareholders.The ostensibly neutral command was seen as a deadly blow to Terra’s interests by Hernandez, given that Peppertree/Goldman Sachs’ tactics for the past four years had been to block all construction activities at board level in order to bring the company to its knees, depress its value and take it over.Terra had started fulfilling its fiduciary obligations on various contracts in defiance, which was what provided the foundation for the minority shareholder arbitration complaint accusing Terra of ‘stealing’ funds to do so without authorisation. (Peppertree’s own unilateral actions in Panama through Gaitan have been cited by Terra Towers, but are yet to be considered by the Arbitration Panel).The growing tension caused Gaitan to anticipate being sacked, he would later tell the Arbitration Court in a victim statement. Hernandez acknowledges he had begun to require that Gaitan’s office should properly back up its records to the Cloud, given it was the only division of the company that had not done so, meaning records were not being shared and could be lost. For reasons unexplained, Gaitan and Echeverria refused to do so.Hernandez then called a meeting at his Guatemala Headquarters for September 28th. The day before, as CCTV cameras later showed, two colleagues close to Gaitan and Echeverria entered their offices and over several hours had removed all of the computers and paperwork leaving no records to be examined and extracting confidential company information in the process.Caught on Cameras – clearing Jorge Gaitan and Carol Echeverria’s OfficesThere are different versions of what transpired at the meeting the following day which lasted for several hours involving several staff. The Terra Towers personnel who provided witness statements for Mr Hernandez, and Hernandez himself, say that Mr Gaitan was requested to restore his company information so that all records could be properly backed up, and that Gaitan persistently refused. Echeverria promised to do so (but so far has not).The Terra version of events is that at the end of the meeting both officers, plus their allies who had performed the clear out, left the premises and failed to return. After three days, under Guatemalan law, they had thereby dismissed themselves and had committed a crime by removing sensitive company information and deleting records. This formed that basis of a later criminal complaint by the company, which also struck them and their allies from its employment.The duo had, of course, headed to the US for their October meetings. The costs of their travel would turn out to have been billed to another Terra Towers subsidiary in El Salvador where Gaitan’s father held a job and his son provided contracting work.Later investigations of the finances of that subsidiary by an independent outside auditor would result in a report claiming that the Gaitans had abused expenses and milked the subsidiary to the tune of $1.2 million, which had been hidden thanks to the trust they’d previously enjoyed and power they exerted over juniors at the office.The company’s resulting criminal complaint would later result in charges in El Salvador which issued an extradition request to Guatemala where Gaitan had been bailed over the separate allegations of theft of company records.Meanwhile, a week after their get together in New York, Adam Schacter as the CT legal counsel, submitted a shocking letter of complaint to the Tribunal detailing what he described as an appalling level of harassment meted out to Jorge Gaitan and Carol Echeverria by Hernandez at the September 28th meeting, in alleged retaliation for their supposed honourable and neutral stance acting as officers of the company.The meeting in Guatemala had been a kidnap and lengthy imprisonment during which the couple were bullied to surrender up information and start collaborating with Terra Towers in a biased manner, wrote Schacter. Armed guards (Hernandez’s habitual bodyguards) had intimidated and restrained them and they had both been arbitrarily sacked for not using their position to favour Terra Towers.“Over the past several months, Mr. Jorge Alberto Gaitán Castro, the Chief Executive Officer and member of the executive team of Continental Towers, has been subjected to an increasing level of harassment and improper pressure from Mr. Jorge Hernández,…this harassment turned into a crisis on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, when Mr. Gaitán and other members of the management team based in Guatemala City, Guatemala, were ushered into a conference room adjacent to Mr. Hernández’s office. Mr. Gaitán and the management team were mostly confined to the area around this conference room and not permitted to leave until very late in the evening. During the time of their detention, Mr. Hernández unleashed an angry and abusive tirade at Mr. Gaitán and his team, stating that he did not trust them. In addition to the verbal attacks, Mr. Hernández’s agents confiscated Mr. Gaitán’s and his team’s computers, searched their offices, disabled their email access, and conducted a search of Mr. Gaitán’s personal car. Mr. Gaitán was rattled and terrified by the entire episode, fearing for his personal well-being, as well as the safety and well-being of his colleagues. Mr. Gaitán, who is diabetic, also suffered medical distress as a result…. This account relies primarily on the firsthand description provided by Mr. Gaitán, which he has memorialized through contemporaneous notes and other means….. To be completely candid, I have never encountered a situation like this in my professional career..”This version of the encounter were read out at a special hearing on October 20th where Peppertree directors expressed their shock at the testimony (although John Ranieri would later acknowledge he had also met with the couple during their visit to New York and it therefore came as no surprise). Indeed, Terra Towers counsel claim the whole story was drawn up in collusion with Schacter and the minority complainants in the case to gain advantage, which they duly did.The panel responded with dramatic measures. The pair must be re-instated, the Chairman Marc Goldstein insisted, not only to their position at the relevant joint venture company Continental Towers, but to the jobs they had walked out of at Terra Towers as well (a matter for Guatemalan jurisdiction given the duo had lodged various employment claims against the company). Likewise, their salaries must continue to be paid as well as their legal fees and all the fees of the two lawyers (now heading towards half a million dollars). Ultimately, the loser in the arbitration could expect to pick up the overall tab.Terra Towers had submitted its counter information that it was now established that Gaitan was not actually legally appointed as CEO in the first place and therefore had no locus to appoint Echeverria or the two lawyers and indeed to reappoint them to positions they had never legally held was an impossible demand.However, Goldstein again ruled against them, deciding that the Framework Agreement, although it violated the original Shareholder Agreement that underlay the joint venture, should be regarded as sufficient to confirm both officers and both lawyers.Significantly, the Tribunal refused to hear any of Terra Tower’s 16 witnesses to the actual events of the alleged kidnapping and harassment described by Gaitan or to look at the evidence collected by the company that undermined their story. Only Mr Hernandez and Mr Gaitan were permitted to produce their statements: evidence, such as pictures showing what appeared to be a normal meeting, was excluded.Mr Gaitan’s word was taken over the word of Mr Hernandez by the Tribunal (who described Hernandez as an unreliable witness), according to a lengthy complaint of bias that was later made by Hernandez’s lawyers to the Southern District Court of New York. That complaint would be rejected.Kidnap nightmare? Gaitan took selfies with staff at the meeting that he later described as kidnap and hours of harassment at the Terra Towers Office – evidence that was not admittedThe panel again refused to allow the normal discovery processes to determine the veracity of Terra’s concerns over collusion with Peppertree/Goldman Sachs, still on the basis that the sale of the company must come first – a sale the company complained was being carried out according to the terms of the powerful Goldman Sachs bank, thereby risking the loss of everything Terra might gain from such a sale.Judge Kaplan of the District Court would later uphold the draconian rulings prompting a jubilant pose by Ms Echeverria through yet another telling photo:Judge Kaplan ruled to uphold the Tribunal’s orders to restore, fund and financially support CT’s ‘Fake’ COOEnforcement!Terra Towers responded to the rulings with a series of requests for clarification and petitions that their growing body of evidence of fraud be heard. They pointed out that the matter of re-instatement of Gaitan and Echeverria had been brought by these two ex-employees before Guatemalan employment law in the form of demands for compensation.Gaitan and Echeverria again visiting Peppertree’s directors January 2022Meanwhile, the photographic records continued to counter the claims of neutrality of Mr Gaitan, whom the Tribunal now recognised as restored to his post as the CEO of Continental Towers.In January of 2022 the neutral couple were back visiting John Ranieri at Chagrin Falls. Likewise, the neutral CT lawyers, also ordered back to their posts by the Tribunal, were making no bones about whose side they favoured.After a very successful year of judgements in their collective favour Adam Schacter sent this message to the ‘CT Arbitration’ WhatsApp chat group at the end of 2022:“Carol – you and Jorge continue to be an inspiration to us all. It’s a privilege to work with each of you. Happy New Year and wishing you all health and happiness in 2023″Fellow lawyer, Jean Paul Dechamps, controversially hired by Mr Gaitan but confirmed in position by the Tribunal ruling, added his own words “Hello team CT arbitration – hope you all had a great start to 2023. I fully echo Adam’s words – Carol and Jorge it really is a privilege to work with you …” Included in the chat group was Gaitan’s then personal lawyer (being funded by Peppertree), one Juan Carlos Zamora, who also chipped in calling the couple “profiles in courage”. Mr Gaitan responded with a telling reference, thanking “the people behind” these supportive allies:Neutrality thrown to the winds by 2023?Mr Gaitan was thanking these lawyers and those behind them for a great deal of financial assistance concerning a growing number of professional and domestic legal battles. With the sanction of the Arbitration Tribunal Peppertree and Goldman Sachs had been meeting the invoices sent in by both Mr Gaitan and Ms Echeverria.The Tribunal had ruled that Terra Towers had no right to see those invoices (which if ruled against they would end up paying). However, the evidence supplied by Mr Gaitan’s wife and now other sources, cited and heard by Sarawak Report, make clear that those expenses included his custody battles with his wife.According to information, teams of local lawyers were billing Gaitan who then passed the invoices, in collaboration with Mr Schacter and Mr Dechamps, to the two complainant parties. Peppertree and Goldman Sachs would then pay directly into the various lawyers accounts, according to information reliably received.Days before his incarceration Jorge Gaitan he planned a meeting with Peppertree and GS reps in the USFrom 2024 those costs had plainly started to rocket uncontrollably. Courts in Guatemala and El Salvador, acting on the evidence received from Terra Towers issued charges against Gaitan and Echeverra, for which they were bailed.This was followed by an extradition request by El Salvador in April 2025, which under Guatemalan law necessitated Gaitan’s previous bail be replaced by incarceration, given he was judged a flight risk.Owing to a decision that the Guatemala case be heard first, Gaitan has remained in jail in that country.Moreover, in May 2025 he compounded his situation by being discovered with illicit communications equipment – a mobile phone, computers – in his cell. This is regarded as a serious criminal violation resulting in further sanctions and costly legal support.‘Immaculate Incarceration’However, proceedings over in New York, where the details underpinning Gaitan’s various prosecutions have yet to be admitted into any of the arbitration or court deliberations, show an attitude of disbelief towards these actions in Latin America.The grounds for Gaitan’s arrests have continually been mocked for being ‘overly convenient’ for the majority shareholder side, namely the local company Terra Towers. For example, during this Southern District of New York court hearing in April 2025 the Latin American incarcerations were insultingly dismissed as an “Immaculate Incarceration”:Goldman Sachs Counsel: “I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t believe the CEO is actually in jail. I don’t even know what they’re going to say about that. And they’ve orchestrated the entire thing just be- —THE COURT: They’re going to say it was an immaculate incarceration.Goldman Sachs Counsel: That’s right. Precisely, your Honor. It was an immaculate incarceration for sure.THE COURT: I mean, it just happened to pop into the mind of some Guatemalan or Salvadorian prosecutor: Gee, why don’t we lock him up. I understand that’s their position.Goldman Sachs Counsel: Amazing, isn’t it? It’s just amazing, like, complete coincidence.In the event the court did not grant the punitive measures Goldman Sachs and Peppertree had asked for to aid enforcement of the $354 million arbitration award, which included the incarceration of all the Terra parties in a US jail and the expropriation of Hernandez’s US property.Rather the judge pointed out that America lacks enforcement jurisdiction over Terra assets in Latin America and remonstrated Goldman/Peppertree lawyers for failing to do their homework on the practicalities in this regard.The matter has become contentious in other respects with a growing volume of allegations that Jorge Gaitan was being paid for by Peppertree/Goldman Sachs in order to manipulate his cooperation.Complaints by Jorge Gaitan’s local lawyers started to emerge in the immediate aftermath of the key $354 million award made by the Tribunal in March 2025 – a ruling upheld by the District Court in August.Guatemalan lawyer, Ana Lucia Alejos Botran, is now publicly revealing on social media that her bills have not been met since April 2025 with some $700,ooo now outstanding. It is a telling date.Documents indicate the body of work invoiced to Peppertree/ Goldman Sachs by lawyers such as Alejos Botran and her predecessors was not only for his extradition and criminal cases, but for his domestic battles as well which previously were paid.Alejos Botran has now resigned and it has been reported that Gaitan’s subsequent legal counsel has also started to complain at lack of payment and that Gaitan himself has been issuing desperate demands blaming his lawyers and ‘those behind them’ for failing to prioritise his release. Among these angry parties are those who believe that now Goldman Sachs and Peppertree have secured the rulings that they want, Mr Gaitan suits them better behind bars while they work to take over Continental Towers once and for all – through enforcement.Mr Gaitan has been “naive”According to evidence, the company lawyers Adam Schacter and Mr Dechamps have confirmed this new reluctance to keep paying by the now victorious claimants, after years of funding Gaitan’s lifestyle (he moved to New York in 2023/23) and his litigation work’When questioned by Sarawak Report in October Mr Schacter responded denying any involvement whatsoever in those payments to Mr Gaitan, responding:“The allegations … are categorically false. I can confirm that neither I nor my law firm have ever provided any funds—directly or indirectly—to Mr. Gaitán or his personal lawyers“.Regular communications – Schacter interfaced for PPT lawyer, Kathy Poldneff, re payments to GaitanHowever, following a highly-charged conversation in December between Mr Schacter, Mr Dechamps, Ms Echaverria (now on bail) and Ms Alejos Botran (details of which have been released to Sarawak Report) we have a clearer picture of Mr Schacter’s role in these payment issues, and through him of the present situation.Explaining that he has been at the front line of the process and in regular contact with the “people cutting the cheques” at Peppertree, Schacter revealed there has indeed been a change of policy.Blaming the high level of fees being charged Schacter said that whilst Peppertree’s lawyers, with whom he was in regular discussion, were generally willing to meet bills, the legal teams at Goldman Sachs (which was sharing the payments sent directly to the legal firms’ accounts) had been less enthusiastic. Schacter explained that Peppertree always wanted to be in “lockstep” with Goldman Sachs.Whilst Schacter was very in favour of the payments continuing, he said, there had been a very concerning development some six months previously (i.e. June) when he, as the neutral Continental Towers company lawyer, received a call from his regular legal contacts at Peppertree saying that they and Goldman Sachs had decided it was time to halt the ‘advancement process’ regarding the bills outstanding since April.Mr Dechamps added that despite the substantial award for damages the two parties were aware that the immediate chances of getting their money were remote (given the assets had been frozen by the Latin American rival jurisdictions) and the company. Therefore, he explained, those companies reasonably wanted to limit the expenses of the last four years.Mr Schacter claimed in the conversation that he had managed to change Peppertree’s mind and that they agreed to continue paying. However, according to public social media posts by Ana Lucia Alejos Botran in January, the bills have still not been met. Perhaps, as Mr Dechamps articulated in the conversation, Mr Gaitan had been “naive”. One participant on the call recollects his remarks were:“Sometimes I think Jorge [Gaitan] has been quite naive… in really behaving as if these corporations, you know, have a heart and feelings. Unfortunately, they don’t listen. The people he deals with, yes, but as you know, people can be disposed of in an instant.So, it’s a super complicated situation because there’s a lot of affection for Jorge, a lot of understanding of his situation, but at the end of the day, you have a bank and you also have a company, and, you know, one that was just bought by another [Peppertree was bought over by TPG May 2025]. So, none of this is for you or us to worry about, but I think that right now everyone’s view is that Jorge has to continue [as a silenced CEO].There have been some signs recently from the Hernández family. They’ve agreed, for example, to have a bank appointed to sell the company. I think that’s a direct consequence of the pressure Kaplan is putting on him. The case in the United States is going very badly for Jorge Hernández, and for Jorge Hernández, not being able to return to the United States. You know how it is for Latin American magnates. It’s the playground they like to go to.“In other words, it appears that Jorge Gaitan has been hung out to dry, stuck in jail and silenced, whilst TPG (a close multi-faceted partner of Goldman Sachs) and its banking ally now set about pressuring and extracting the New York award, equivalent to the entire value of Henandez’s stake in the company.Request To Order BVI To Cede Terra’s SharesContemporaneously with these revealing statements by the ‘neutral lawyers’ representing Continental Towers, the self-same claimant shareholders were putting in motion a second attempt to gain enforcement through New York.Just before Christmas a request was made for the South District Court to order that the authorities in the British Virgin Islands, where Continental Towers is incorporated, should hand over all Terra Tower’s shares in the company (which ultimately hold its numerous assets in Latin America) to Peppertree/Goldman Sachs.There is precedent, they argue, under reciprocal enforcement arrangements, for the tiny off-shore haven to comply, thereby neatly by-passing the jurisdictions of all the countries which are investigating charges of fraud by Peppertree directors, Jorge Gaitan and others and frozen those assets in the process.Alternatively, the BVI could stand up to US legal might and face the consequences.Judge Kaplan’s decision on this so-called Petition for Relief is believed to be due imminently.His ruling will be made with the allegations of corporate raiding, fraud, breach of fiduciary duties and seduction of corrupted employees, made by Terra Towers, yet to be heard or tested in any way: either by discovery, the submission of evidence or the hearing of witnesses as repeatedly requested by the Terra Towers’ legal teams in the name of fair and normal practice.Accusations about biased legal systems, subject to powerful manipulation, look inevitably to continue in both directions.