UPDATE The five-year legal entanglement between Terra Towers and Peppertree Capital in a deal involving Continental Towers LATAM seems to have reached a resolution. To recap, in 2014-2015, Peppertree, through investment entities Telecom Business Solution LLC and LATAM Towers LLC, and other investors invested in the company, Continental Towers LATAM Holdings Limited, entered into a related shareholders agreement with Terra Towers. The agreement stipulated that after an initial lock-up period of five years, any party could require a sale process to be initiated to sell the company.
In 2020, in accordance with the agreement, Peppertree and other investors initiated the sale process, but Terra Towers refused to sell the company in breach of the agreement. Criminal allegations were made against Peppertree and its investor partners. So, the case ended up in litigation.
In November 2022, the law firm Flannery | Georgalis, LLC conducted an independent internal investigation into the criminal allegations and concluded, “Our investigation has revealed no evidence that would support Terra Towers’ allegations, and we therefore find them meritless …. There is no credible evidence that Peppertree or Continental Towers committed a violation of U.S. law, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and U.S. sanctions.”
The Arbitration Panel, on the 5th Partial Final Award in March 2025, stated that “Each of the measures taken [by Hernandez] had as its evident motive … to entrench Mr. Hernandez’s de facto control over the Company by generating falsehoods about and vexatious proceedings against Company Management. [These episodes] … show flagrantly improper conduct by Mr. Hernandez. Several of [these] episodes involve publications on internet websites about this case, as to which Respondents offer no defense that the publications were appropriate, or that the publications were not willful and wanton conduct, or flagrantly improper by those who caused the publications.”
“Respondent[s] disobeyed the specific performance provisions of the FPFA [the Tribunal 5th Partial Final Award Order] and thus the judgment confirming that award and they have continued in their disobedience. They are in civil contempt of this Court’s order confirming the FPFA and appropriate relief to secure compliance will be granted,” stated presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan, Federal District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York, in his Anti-Suit Injunction and Contempt Order on April 22, 2025. “It is long since time that counsel and his clients recognize that they have lost. Their endless repetition is vexatious and inappropriate.”
In a statement to Inside Towers, a TPG Peppertree spokesperson said, “Following nearly five years of litigation between Peppertree and Terra Towers Corp., an arbitration panel in New York unanimously awarded Peppertree $354 million against Terra Towers, and its representative Jorge Hernandez personally. This judgment included $25 million of punitive damages against Mr. Hernandez for, among other acts, instigating false criminal complaints. That arbitration ruling has now been confirmed by a federal district judge for the Southern District of New York. We are confident that any criminal inquiry brought now by Mr. Hernandez in a foreign court has no merit, and we will take appropriate steps to have this matter terminated.”
By John Celentaano, Inside Towers Business Editor