EDITORIAL: WHY WE URGE TO STOP OPERATIONS WITH iFUEL AG.

We are fully aware that we may be accused of blackening a company that allegedly has no direct connection to a defaulter company on our register. However, this story is about why the "Spirit of the Law" is always superior than the "Letter of the Law" and why we intend to continue to bring swindlers to light, no matter what company names they hide behind.

This story began almost a year ago, when GEORGIAN PETROLEUM LLC created a case against JAF EUROPE LTD (UK) in the Global Aviation register of Defaulter companies BLACKLIST.AERO. The company accused JAF EUROPE LTD of non-payment of 229,840 USD for fuel supplies in Georgia. In his case, the claimant directly pointed to a certain RINAD EL-RABAA as the organizer of this fraud who personally flew to Tbilisi to arrange supplies and met with the management of Georgian Petroleum, calling himself the sole owner of JAF EUROPE LTD.

Having started our standard procedures in relation to the defaulter we sent our CASE HAS BEEN CREATED notification to JAF EUROPE LTD and did not receive any response from the company itself. However, we received a letter from RINAD EL-RABAA himself, who categorically denied his connection with JAF EUROPE LTD and threatened to sue BLACKLIST.AERO if we associate his name with JAF EUROPE LTD.

"I have been an employee of JAF Europe Ltd and have resigned from my position a while back ago. I was not a director nor a shareholder of the company (moreover i haven’t signed any agreements with them) and therefore i am not legally responsible for the below situation. It is true that JAF Europe Ltd went into financial crisis when covid began however i have nothing to do with this. 

I therefore strongly suggest to contact the management of JAF Europe Ltd to resolve this situation. In case my name appears in your portal i will have no choice but to use legal action against blacklist.aero and Georgian Petroleum for using my name and of multiple accounts of corruption that i am aware of when being an employee for JAF Europe Ltd. I am not bringing that up now however if my name is unfairly used in this case i will have no choice but pursue a legal action on those basis".

In response, we asked a series of questions that were never answered again. However, some time later, we received a letter from the Swiss law firm HUTTE LAW, which almost word for word repeated the letter from Rinad El-Rabaa with the same threats of prosecution.

As you already know, this did not stop us, and we repeatedly published information about JAF EUROPE and Rinad El-Rabaa. We found at least four witnesses who are ready to give official evidence that it was Rinad El-Rabaa who hired and fired employees in the company, managed the company's account, paid (or did not pay) salaries to employees. Thus, he exercised effective control over JAF EUROPE LTD never identifying himself as the owner in official documents though. Instead, in different years the directors were his wife, a citizen of the UK and at the same time a citizen of the Russian Federation KATERYNA VOZNENKO and his father, a citizen of the Russian Federation IZZAT EL-RABAA.

It must be said that Rinad El-Rabaa himself has dual citizenship. Along with British citizenship, he uses a foreign passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation No. 724###91.

All this prompted us to ask further questions to Rinad El-Rabaa and we sent a journalistic request to his lawyers and to him personally. However, like last time, neither HUTTE LAW nor Rinad El-Rabaa himself took care to answer us. We have been waiting for a response for three months. As we can see, their "official communication" was enough only for threats, but not for consideration of issues on the merits. So we have to make this request here, publicly.

Let us recall that the Global Aviation Register of Defaulter Companies BLACKLIST.AERO has voluntarily assumed the obligations of the Royal Charter on self-regulation of the press. Therefore, we are ready to publish the position of Rinad El-Rabaa as soon as he provides his answers on his own or through lawyers.

Moving right along. In the course of our journalistic investigation, we, quite by accident, came across ... the debtor of JAF EUROPE LTD!!! The amount of this debtor's debt to JAF EUROPE LTD is more than 250K USD! Moreover, this company has previously appeared in our Register and we managed to obtain a return of funds from this debtor. Therefore, we came up with the idea to offer Rinad El-Rabaa and JAF EUROPE LTD to create a case in relation to their debtor in the BLACKLIST.AERO Register and sign a tripartite agreement, according to which the Register will act as the Administrator of payments, accept payment from the debtor of JAF EUROPE LTD, and pay the debt of JAF EUROPE LTD to GEORGIAN PETROLEUM LLC, collect Case mediation fee and send the rest to JAF EUROPE LTD. Thus, both companies could solve the problems that have arisen fairly and taking into account the interests of all parties.

But our proposal to Rinad El-Rabaa and his lawyers from HUTTE LAW also remained unanswered. You can wonder why. One of the answers to this question for us was the information that after the information about the debt of JAF EUROPE LTD and the direct connection of Rinad El-Rabaa with it was made public and word of mouth spread it throughout the aviation market, this company was ... eliminated. It's not hard to check, UK registries are open: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09408969/officers

Another answer could be the questions set in our journalistic request to Rinad El-Rabaa and his lawyers. No, we are not hinting at anything ... At all ... Really ...

The close connection of Rinad El-Rabaa and his entire family with the Russian Federation can be traced not only at the level of citizenship. It is worth noting that, for example, iFuel AG, with which he publicly associates himself, has a dispatch office in Moscow. As well as basic clients. Of course, now the company's management is somehow trying to resolve this issue, given the sanctions that a number of companies in the aviation market have already fallen under.

In order to prove the participation of JAF EUROPE LTD, iFuel AG and Rinad El-Rabaa personally in transactions with customers acting in the interests of the top Russian leadership, including the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, access to an array of data is required, which we do not have. Therefore, we cannot assert this as a fact. However, we can apply with all available data from our sources to those who have such access a priori. And we will do so. So it is possible that the series of aviation market companies that fell under US and European sanctions is not over yet ...

There is also a purely moral aspect in our appeal to boycott iFuel AG. The BLACKLIST.AERO register fights against scammers who accumulate debts, close companies and open new ones as if nothing had happened. Our goal is to clear the aviation market of such swindlers. And we are not going to deviate from our goal. Persons engaged in fraud in the aviation market will never again be able to be calm for their sins, simply by changing the sign.