You may remember last March when we reported on a 70 year-old man and his 35 year-old roommate threatening to do nasty things to their landlord after he tried (unsuccessfully) to get some of his $250,000 in back rent. Well, nearly a year later, the now 71-year-old Ekkehart Schwarz and 36 year-old Vasileios Giamagas have somehow gotten out of the charges, leaving some mysterious third man to take the brunt of it. According to the Post the building manager of this never-opened Third Avenue bar and lounge, Niroo Yavari, 48, was involved in several instances for more than a year, where he was allegedly kidnapped and threatened with fake guns, pliers, a screwdriver, and forced sodomy by what he described to cops as "a never-identified giant guy with an Eastern European accent."
This third man has now been revealed to be one Kakhaber Gogoladze—350 lbs of Georgian muscle. Gogoladze allegedly told Yavari he had better "play along" or face torturous consequences. Schwarz and Giamagas, however, contend that Yavari was a lousy manager who never made the promised renovations, and only came forward a year after his so-called kidnapping, leaving their dreams of opening "Restaulounge-Bar De'Vill" at 68 West Third Street in shambles.
Lead prosecutor James Meadows told jurors in his opening statement this morning that Yavari had in his possession audio recordings of his alleged tormentors as they brought the hurt on him. In one, Giamagas allegedly boasts of having once had his own brother killed and that according to Meadows, before coming to America, he had "fought as a mercenary in the Chechen War"—as compared to after coming to America, when he fought as a mercenary for Third Avenue tenants.
