A Court May Close Besen & Associates While Owners Continue Legal Battle

One of the owners of investment sales firm Besen & Associates is asking a court to dissolve the company while the acrimonious legal battle between the two former partners continues.

Amit Doshi filed a lawsuit with the New York State Supreme Court this week requesting the judicial dissolution of the firm, Commercial Observer reports. Doshi is arguing he and partner Michael Besen cannot “jointly own and operate the company” because of “severe dissension and irreconcilable distrust” between them.

“The negotiations between [Doshi] and [Besen] have been fruitless,” Doshi’s lawyer, Mark Walfish, wrote in the filing. "[Doshi] had no alternative but to file the accompanying petition requesting a judicial dissolution of the company."

The pair has been locked in a legal battle for nearly a year, after Besen sued Doshi in May 2018, The Real Deal reported at the time, accusing him of mismanaging the firm and the properties. Besen countered, alleging Doshi took around $1.5M from the firm for his own use through a secret account, and that he tried to steal a property in Jackson Heights by setting up a shell company.

If the court moves forward with a judicial dissolution, it will have to make decisions about how to dismantle the company, and properties the pair own together — including 223 West 30th St. and 312 East 116th St. — could be auctioned off, according to CO. It could also pave the way for Besen to buy out Doshi and continue the brokerage and investment firm without him.