Rafael Bigio wins his case against coca cola

Montreal Jew wins round against Coca-Cola
Source: National PostWhen Refael Bigio was a boy, he would run into the Coca-Cola bottling plant on his family’s Egyptian estate and be welcomed by the smell of cola, the clinking of glass and lollipops in the shape of little bottles."Because I was the son of the owner, they used to dip it twice in sugar," the 63-year-old Montreal grandfather said of those treats.But that collegial, decades-old relationship between the Bigio family and the beverage company would change. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Mr. Bigio could proceed with his lawsuit against Coca-Cola Co., which he says bought property that had been confiscated from his family by the Egyptian government in 1962. Email to a friendEmail to a friendPrinter friendlyPrinter friendly Font: * * * * * * * *The lawsuit, one of the first of its kind, could set a precedent in court battles by other Jewish business owners seeking to recover assets seized in the Arab world."Coca-Cola knew certainly well that we are the owners of these assets and that we were expropriated because we are Jewish," Mr. Bigio said yesterday from his office in the borough of Outremont. "I was horrified by their act .... They’ve abused all measures of common decency."Nathan Lewin, Mr. Bigio’s high-profile Washington, D.C., lawyer, said Coca- Cola is trespassing on his client’s property and will seek damages of at least $100-million.In the late 1930s, Mr. Bigio said Coca-Cola leased part of his family’s land in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo, and set up a plant. Later, the Bigios started manufacturing bottle caps and serving trays for Coca-Cola.According to some historians, a surge of pan-Arab nationalism forced about 50,000 Jews to flee Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s. One day in 1962, Mr. Bigio who was being groomed to take over the family business, arrived at the family factory to find the street filled with police officers demanding he turn over the keys.Penniless, the family fled to France, where they were accepted as refugees before moving to Montreal and establishing a successful agro-industrial enterprise.In 1980, Egypt’s minister of finance ordered the state insurance company, Misr Insurance, to return the Bigios’ properties to them.Mr. Bigio had been trying unsuccessfully for years to reclaim his assets through Egytian courts when he heard Coca-Cola was interested in buying the bottling company that ran his family’s old factories. "We approached them in good faith, in a peaceful manner and reminded them of the relationship we had with them," Mr. Bigio said. He requested compensation, "but they brushed us off."