Head of Irvine Firm Is a Four-Star Hotel General Under Siege : Enterprise: Americom’s Paul Tatum wins a battle against his partners. A Moscow court tells them not to interfere.

All seemed well in the glow of perestroika as Irvine-based Americom Business Centers and Radisson Hotels International teamed up in 1989 to operate a posh hotel and business office complex in Moscow.

Now the relationship resembles a battle scene from “War and Peace.”

And Americom’s fiery president, Paul E. Tatum, is battling not only the Minneapolis hotel operator, but the Russian partner in the joint venture as well.

An increasingly ugly two-year fight for control of the Radisson Slavjanskaya, Moscow’s only American-run luxury hotel-business complex, worsened last week as Tatum barricaded himself in his three-room suite while armed Moscow police tried to enforce an eviction ordered by his partners.

But on Tuesday, Tatum won some breathing room when Moscow’s Dorogomilovsky District Court temporarily halted the eviction effort, allowing him to retain his office and his suite until a trial can be held.

The court’s ruling comes just a day before White House advance teams are scheduled to visit the hotel to prepare for President Clinton’s May 9-11 summit with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin. Clinton stayed in the hotel during his visit to Moscow in January, 1994.

Tatum got to Russia with the help of a key figure from another administration. Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, the late H.R. Haldeman, was an Americom co-founder who used his political clout in Russia to help the company win its stake in the lucrative Slavjanskaya operation.

But since the hotel opening in 1991, Tatum and his other partners have been feuding over his operation of the business complex and the charges he has rung up at the hotel.

In its decision Tuesday, the Moscow court told Americom’s partners to stop interfering in the conduct of Tatum’s business.

“We’re gonna tell them to jump off a cliff,” the jubilant Orange County entrepreneur said in a telephone interview from his apartment on the top floor of the four-star hotel. He said he would try to reclaim his office in the nine-story building’s business wing this morning.

Since the attempted eviction, Tatum had been camping out in his apartment--subsisting on takeout food because he has been denied room service--while round-the-clock guards have been manning his office. Joint venture officials said they are taking all required legal steps to process Tatum’s eviction.

“The board members are not against Americom as a company; they’re against Paul Tatum as a person,” said Umar Dzhabrailov, acting general director of the joint venture. “He is a destructive element.”

Despite Tatum’s fractious, tumultuous relationship with his partners, not everyone is discouraged from doing business with him.

Tatum disclosed Tuesday that Hyatt Hotels and Florida developers Brown & Rook will soon become partners with Americom in building a multimillion-dollar hotel and business complex in the booming central Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod.

Though the deal has not yet been formally announced, Tatum said the hotel complex, which would include a business center to be run by Americom and an exhibition center, would begin operations in mid-1996.

Hyatt is aware of problems that the Radisson partnership has been having, but “it has not dissuaded us from working with Americom,” said Gerald Sanders, Hyatt’s director of development.

“It hasn’t affected the city of Nizhny Novgorod’s consideration of Americom, either,” he added. Hyatt, while close to opening other hotels in Moscow and St. Petersburg, has not yet begun operations in the former Soviet Union.

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The joint venture that runs Moscow’s Radisson Slavjanskaya includes Mosintour, an agency of the city of Moscow and heir to the old Soviet internal tourism agency Intourist.

The dispute with Tatum centers on the assertion by Dzhabrailov and other joint venture operators that Americom’s chief owes nearly $300,000 in rent and other expenses that he has charged to the hotel. Tatum, however, contends that the joint venture is supposed to pay those expenses.

Tatum and the heads of Radisson Hotels and Mosintour sit as directors of the joint venture, but the Minneapolis hotel chain has sued to dissolve its ties with Americom, and Mosintour is pursuing the eviction.

Bernie Rome, a Newport Beach executive and co-founder of Americom, said Mosintour wants Tatum out because he “has not recognized the (partnership’s) Russian member” since the dissolution of the Soviet Union caused Mosintour to be substituted for the Soviet Intourist organization.

Rome, who is retired and works part time as a consultant to Americom, said he sees Tatum’s problems with Radisson as a culture clash.

“You have two companies with very different ways of operating,” he said. “There’s the large, highly structured Radisson and then there’s Americom, a small entrepreneurial company with a strong majority shareholder in control. Each is blaming the other for interfering” in operations.

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During the public feud that has made Tatum a highly visible personality in Moscow--he has held press conferences on the front steps of the hotel complex to complain of his treatment--he has been accused by his partners of shady financial management and of failing to fulfill his business obligations.

The partnership tried to evict Tatum last year, locking him out of the Slavjanskaya for 12 days after he fired the Russian American who was acting as general partner for the joint partnership.

Since then, the feud has grown increasingly bitter. Hotel officials now say they have proof that Tatum has been falsifying contracts and other documents to help strengthen his case.

“If I were an Americom stockholder, I would certainly question the management of the company,” said Richard Mason, the hotel’s current general manager.

Several of Americom’s earliest stockholders have done just that, filing a suit in U.S. District Court in Tampa in 1992 in an effort to force the company to oust Tatum.

The company was formed in Irvine in 1989 and immediately went public by merging with a publicly traded shell company in Florida, Apollo Acquisitions Inc.

James McDonough, the Sarasota investor who started Apollo, said Tuesday that his group brought Americom its initial financing but owned only a minority interest in the merged company and increasingly was left out of the decision-making processes.

McDonough said he expects a ruling by early summer on whether the lawsuit, which alleges that Tatum disregarded the interests of the minority shareholders, can go forward.

Shareholder Marshall D. Davis of Jacksonville said that Tatum, who owns 57% of the company, “has been living like a king over there” at the expense of Americom’s early investors.

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Chronology of a U.S.-Soviet Business Deal

When Irvine-based Americom and Radisson Hotels International first teamed up to operate a hotel in Moscow, the future seemed bright. But the partnership eventually sank under a series of power struggles. How it developed:

1987

May: Orange County political fund-raiser Paul E. Tatum begins work on establishing a business center for foreign companies in Moscow.

1988

September-October: Tatum joins with four others interested in Soviet project: Vladimir Draitser, an electronics engineer and Russian immigrant; H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, Nixon White House chief of staff; Bernard Rome, former chairman of Telefile Inc., an Irvine computer company; and Robert Schmidt, former vice chairman of Control Data Corp.

1989

March: Tatum incorporates Americom International Corp. in Delaware.

April: Tatum’s group meets Soviet tourism officials, signs preliminary agreement to establish business center in nine-story Moscow hotel.

May: Haldeman begins negotiating with several major U.S. hotel chains for possible Moscow joint venture.

July: Americom signs agreement with Radisson Hotel Corp. to form RadAmer Partnership.

August: Partnership reaches tentative agreement with Soviet tourism agency, Intourist, to alter project to include a business center and U.S.-managed hotel.

1990

May: Americom and Radisson reach final agreement with Intourist to establish Intourist-RadAmer Hotel and Business Center, also known as the American Trade Center.

December: Project hits a snag when government of Russian Republic decrees it has sovereignty over all properties within its borders. This puts republic in conflict with Soviet state government over who would own hotel-business complex.

1991

February: After months of wrangling, parties reach agreement in which Intourist makes Moscow City Council a partner in project.

July: Hotel opens for business as Radisson-Slavjanskaya.

August: With Russsian President Boris N. Yeltsin staving off a coup attempt, Tatum gets into the Parliament building and gives Yeltsin aides use of his cellular phone.

1992

April: Dozen stockholders file suit in Florida against Americom, alleging Tatum misused company assets. Americom forms new partnership with Mosintour, wholly owned company of Moscow city government, after Intourist is dissolved by the Russian government.

1994

April: Radisson files suit to dissolve RadAmer partnership and seeks control of American half of the joint venture.

June: Armed guards bar Tatum from hotel after he tries to break into an office and cut off phone lines. Americom and Radisson try to resolve dispute; Tatum is allowed access to hotel after 12-day lock-out.

1995

March: U.S. District Court in Minneapolis orders RadAmer partnership dissolved. Liquidating agent to be appointed soon.

April: Americom’s partners claim Tatum owes $300,000 in personal expenses and issue repeated warnings to pay or be evicted. Police called to evict Tatum and bodyguards from hotel. Tatum files for dispute arbitration, obtains court order temporarily halting eviction. He reveals Americom is about to sign new hotel/business center deal with Hyatt Hotels in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod.

Source: Times reports; Researched by CRISTINA LEE and JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times