Six Senses continue to lie. The criminal is not convicted.

Dear friends! Thank you for your letters and messages to the new Six Senses owners – the IHG (Intercontinental Hotel Group). 260000 people signed my petition within a few weeks.

Many of you responded to my request and appealed to the Intercontinental Hotel Group on February 21. It is easy to find hundreds of your Facebook comments requesting to answer my petition in the IHG profile.

Your comments stayed there a few days and were later deleted. I have never received any feedback neither on our petition nor on my letter to the new owners. There is no doubt now that the company knows the petition exist. Having all this knowledge they still keep silence. By not responding to my appeals they admit that rape in their hotels is not a problem for the management 

This does not stop me. I will continue fighting for myself and other women. I know how strong your support is. 

On February 22 on the grounds of "no case to answer" the judge delivered the verdict on my criminal case with no right to appeal. The rapist was not convicted. 

Six Senses press officer released the company’s statement to the media. There are no words to describe the cynicism of it and my emotions. I will shortly highlight the facts. I have no hope to hear any human words from the Six Senses managers. Since 2017 they had more than one chance to say those.

I demand Six Senses to return the evidence proving me being right. I will follow up in human rights court. By herewith I will oppose their arguments step by step.

SIX SENSES: February 22, 2019 - A Seychelles court has acquitted a former Six Senses employee in a case arising from an incident that occurred on May 4, 2017 at our Seychelles resort. Ravind Sudhooa, a former housekeeper, was found innocent of the sexual assault charges brought by Anna Karabash, a former guest and travel writer from Russia.

HERE IS MY ANSWER:  The case was closed with the verdict “no case to answer”. This means there was no enough evidence to find the defendant guilty. The defendant did not have to prove himself not guilty. What a wonderful legal practice! I was not allowed to have an attorney; I do not have a right to appeal on the Seychelles. This is exactly why I demand to give the evidence and witnesses back to me and I will go further to the human rights courts.

• Where is the CCTV footage? Neither criminal court, not the civil one has it. Do you know why? The defence lawyer Basil Hoare refers to this footage while quoting my interrogation in December 2017 Back then he referred to this video in order to question my words. According to my statement, after two hours of torcher under the life threat I ran from the villa away wearing pink sneakers while the footage shows me dressed in the blue ones. But the footage simply disappeared. None of the judges saw it. But if they did, they would watch me banging on the doors screaming for help. It would also identify how long I was running looking for help while the hotel security was asleep.
• Where are the rapist’s drug tests? They are not enclosed to the evidence even though the tests have been taken. Test results did not come back from the laboratory as the state attorney David Esparon whispered to me in December 2017 with no witnesses around.
• Where is the protocol of the suspect interrogation performed by Hendrick Voital and dated back May 5, 2017? On the first day after the crime took place, Hendrick interrogated the suspect and the suspect claimed himself guilty. Hendrick has confirmed this to me while we were sitting in front of the courtroom doors. That day his turn to take the witness stand did not come. A few months later he was witnessing something opposite. I believe he was either corrupted or threatened so he would shut up. Later on under the influence of the most highly paid lawyers on the islands Базиля Хоаре the defendant Ravind Sudhooa changed his testimony and claimed we knew each other and I voluntarily invited him into my room. He lied at the witness stand.
• Why didn’t they allow Olga Fler, my travel companion in that trip, to testify? Her testimony was not attached to the criminal case. They said we were too late with providing those by then. The day I filed the case no one asked for the sighed testimony from the witness. Back then we did not know the procedure and were in shock therefore did not demand to take witness’s . Later on the prosecutor’s office played all possible tricks not to answer this question.
• Another important witness, the hotel’s general manager Eduard  Grosmangin, disappeared from the case. He somehow disappeared from the staff schedule. He was not only immediately fired but also hidden from the court. In our documented conversation he admitted that the cleaner had his own key. Later in the court they said the cleaner did not have his own key. The hotel management also said the police does not work in early hours and we needed to wait till the morning. This was complete lie. The police works 24/7 and locates 15 minutes away from the hotel on the La Digue island.
• I am not talking about the knife that disappeared while the hotel was doing its best not to call the police for 8 hours.

SIX SENSES: During the police investigation and trial, the resort was committed to a fair, impartial legal process. Six Senses cooperated fully with authorities and turned over all evidence and materials as requested.

HERE IS MY ANSWER:  There was no fair, impartial investigation. The fact that Laura Valabhji, the Six Senses Zil Pasyon’s co-owner spent thousands of dollars on the suspect’s attorney is enough to prove that the hotel never supported any of that. And those were only legal fees. God knows how much she also spent on hiding the evidence and silencing the witnesses. I am not aware of the Seychelles corruption pricelist.

I will write my highlights on the court hearings in the next post. Together with my lawyer we will disclose a number of fascinating details.

SIX SENSES: We also were unable to publicly address the numerous inaccuracies and distortions being reported in the press and on social media.

HERE IS MY ANSWER:  They lie again. Every part of this statement has already gone public last year. Once again everything they wrote before and are saying now is a lie.

SIX SENSES: Now that Mr. Sudhooa has been acquitted, we want to set the record straight as to some of those inaccurate assertions: the safety and security of our guests and staff is our top priority. Regrettably, Ms. Karabash’s descriptions of events in her media and online interviews are inconsistent with the resort’s records from the night of May 4, 2017. 


HERE IS MY ANSWER:  What recordings she is talking about? CCTV footage has never been presented to the court.

SIX SENSES: Our resort team responded to Ms. Karabash in a proactive, compassionate manner that was sensitive to her wishes. They called the police; coordinated an examination with the resort nurse; relocated her to a new villa after the incident; and facilitated her trip to a neighbouring island for medical examination. They also arranged a meeting with the resort’s ownership. 


HERE IS MY ANSWER:  I asked for two basic things: to call the police and a doctor as soon as possible. A hotel nurse examined me instead and concluded that I had no bruises and therefore seemed to be OK. Certain procedures are applied during the rape victim examination. Those require the use of a rape kit, antibiotic injections and prescribing HIV preventive medicines.  The latter need to be taken within 72 hours after the intercourse. None of that was provided to the victim on the Seychelles either by the nurse or by the police doctor.

Meanwhile the hotel management was misleading me on the police’s remoteness, accessibility, timing and distance of their arrival. I was lucky my colleague recorded our conversation with the general manager Edouard Grosmangin. The conversation took place 7 hours after I found the hotel security staff, reported the crime and asked to call the police. It was the second dehumanising interrogation since the crime took place.  Interrogation can only be handled by the dedicated police officers. But before they came, the hotel’s general manager was asking for the details of the rape, said that the housekeeper had a key from my room and suggested I, myself, invited the man. Olga Fler, not the hotel staff, was the one who finally called the police 8 hours after the rape. When she called, the police receptionist informed that her call was the first one from the Felicity Island reporting this particular crime.

Obviously, the general manager did not have any legal right to interrogate me. I have possess both – the recording and its decoding - but those have not been recognised as evidence by the court. Meeting the hotel co-owner Laura Valabhji, was another shock. Without any greetings she asked me if I got a pleasure the night before.

SIX SENSES: Within hours of the incident, Ms. Karabash proposed that resort management and ownership pay her in exchange for her keeping her story silent. On three additional occasions, she requested that she be paid varying sums—as much as EUR 1 million. The last communication, on April 26, 2018, was followed by a threat from her attorney in Russia that Ms. Karabash would launch a media campaign against the resort if Six Senses did not comply. The resort and ownership rejected all proposals for payment to Ms. Karabash. 


HERE IS MY ANSWER:  I am in my rights to require compensation for the lack of safety and required security measures at the hotel as well as for employing a dangerous to the public individual. After the attack he was released before the court hearings. Later he was caught naked intending to rape a local woman at her house. I never had an intention to keep silence. The first stories gone public on May 6. 2017. To be fair, now, after two years of the court humiliations, I estimate the damage even higher.

SIX SENSES: The resort has clear policies against employee social contact with guests. Mr.Sudhooa was disciplined for failing to obey resort policies and was later dismissed from his job. 
 The resort has a thorough security program in place for the safety of guests and employees, and we believe that proper security was exercised in this case. We provide extensive fire/life/safety and emergency training for our hosts and staff, and are continually reviewing our security policies. 


HERE IS MY ANSWER:  May I have more highlights on that?

• There is no clear understanding if the hotel staff undergoes psychiatric assessment before signing their job offers.  The guests would highly benefit of this practice as my case proves.  As it turned out the hotel employee Ravind Sudhooa happens to be a career criminal. At the moment he is a suspect in another rape case currently heard in the court.
• Upon the check-in no one explains the guests where to find the emergency button at the villa in case of danger There are no CCTV cameras at the entrance to the villa. If there were, no one would doubt what happened at the villa 11 on May 4, 2017 at the Six Senses Zil Pasyon. 
• If the hotel guards would video monitor the premise instead of being deeply asleep, they would see a woman running around the huge hotel territory seeking for assistance.
• Villas are located far from each other. My villa was about 2 km away from the restaurant and the pier. There was no use of yelling, although I did. Also it took me 15 – 20 minutes to run for help. It was not obvious where the security post is, there was no common reception area
• either. I saw the light at the restaurant and ran towards it loosing my track from time to time as the territory is poorly lit and surrounded by the jungles.
• My case proves the opposite – there is no safety or security in this hotel. The fact that the hotel does not feel responsible makes it even worse. If they did, they would help investigating this crime. 

My Moscow based-lawyer Elena Chernova (the President of the Moscow bar association) comments: 

“Seychelles is a small country. It is a very small and closed world. The local bar Association consists of 300 members. Half of those are related. Five of those are honoured by the Republic.  Those five turned our appeals for defence down.  My colleagues look away when stating they are engaged  by the counter party. It should be mentioned that those five honoured legal advisers are not involved in the case directly. Those lawyers do not represent either the hotel or the suspect but informed us about the conflict of interests. We have all the grounds to suspect there is lobbying happening behind the curtain.

When something extremely negative happens at a hotel, restaurant or a health club their management has a choice of two options: either maximum transparency and open cooperation or the lack of transparency and denial.

Denial strategy for certain can be successful in a short run. In case nether the hotel, nor the state government are willing to fight for the safe environment, stories like mine would repeat themselves over and over again. In a long run they would lose the trust of citizens and tourists.

Unfortunately, people who think in short terms and only of their personal benefits are not able to understand the consequences”.