A Salvadoran emigrant who developed expertise in concrete and rebar construction claims that his partners in two companies froze him out by threatening to get him deported.
Vicente Martinez Cienfuegos is demanding $2.5 million from Glenco Contracting Group and Aro Construction Group, both of Yonkers, and from co-owners Sean Aronsen and David McGrath, in a June 27 lawsuit filed in Westchester Supreme Court.
“Defendants engaged in a systematic pattern of racial harassment and shareholder oppression,” the complaint states, “before ultimately extorting him through threats of deportation, forcing him to sign an agreement … in order to retake his valuable one-third interest without consideration.”
The defendants’ attorney, Martin P. Skolnick, said the complaint contains “serious inaccuracies and falsehoods,” and his clients “categorically deny the false and defamatory assertions.”
Cienfuegos emigrated to the United States in 2003, according to the complaint, and specialized in installing rebar, the steel bars that reinforce concrete. Rebar expertise, he said, is extremely valuable, commands high profit margins and is consistently in demand in the New York market.
Cienfuegos claims he has the technical expertise and, because he is bilingual in English and Spanish, the ability to coordinate with general contractors, site foremen and the laborers who, like himself, are often native-Spanish speakers.
He got to know Aronsen in 2011 when they were union employees working on rebar projects.
In 2017, the complaint states, Aronsen approached Cienfuegos about starting their own rebar and concrete businesses. Glenco, a concrete company, and Aro, a rebar company, were formed in 2018.
They agreed to be one-third partners, according to the complaint, and share profits equally. Each contributed $45,000 in capital. Cienfuegos’ role was to procure new work and supervise construction jobs.
He says he worked without a written agreement for more than a year but was repeatedly promised that he would be compensated “as if he were an equal partner.”
The businesses quickly became lucrative, according to the complaint, and generated millions of dollars in profits for the partners.
In 2019, they formalized the partnerships with shareholder agreements, the complaint states. But according to Cienfuegos, his partners did not treat him equally.
Cienfuegos alleges that Aronsen frequently referred to him in “hateful, racist and xenophobic” terms; threatened to deport him if he didn’t do a good job; demeaned him at construction site meetings; and manufactured disputes with workers to undercut their trust in him.
He claims that he was frozen out of decision-making and denied access to business records.
In late 2019, the complaint states, Cienfuegos was summoned to a meeting with Aronsen, McGrath and their attorney to sign a new contract. They allegedly told him that he was ineligible to remain as a shareholder because of his immigration status. He was directed to sign new agreements that, he was allegedly told, would nominally remove him from the businesses but preserve his one-third interests until he attained citizenship.
The complaint does not explain Cienfuegos’ immigration status but states that he “always worked lawfully, pays his taxes, and is actively working with immigration counsel.” It also states that New York law does not bar noncitizens from holding an interest in state corporations.
He claims that his partners coerced him into signing the new agreements by threatening to report him to immigration authorities. But they allegedly presented him only with the signature pages.
They continued to pay him for supervising jobs for more than a year, at about the same annual compensation he had previously received, $500,000.
He was fired in January. Then his attorney obtained the new agreements in their entirety, and that is when Cienfuegos learned that they were actually recission agreements in which he had agreed to resign as an officer and director, relinquish his shares and not compete, leaving him “unable to work in the construction industry.”
Cienfuegos says he was offered severance of $1.3 million, a sum that he claims substantially undervalues his one-third interest in the businesses.
He accuses his former partners of fraud and breaches of contract and fiduciary duty, and Aronsen of discrimination based on his Hispanic heritage. He is asking the court to declare the most recent agreements unenforceable.
Cienfuegos is represented by Manhattan attorneys Lee Bergstein and Evan Fried.
