Cappadocia: the estate's only asset cannot be located

Just after nine on the morning of August 14, 2025 a bailiff instructed by Royal Bank of Canada's solicitors walked into a wholesale warehouse at 18547 104 Avenue NW in north Edmonton. Muhammet Cetin, a director of the company that traded there, "was very cooperative and let me into the building and gave me a tour of the shop," the bailiff recorded. He made a photographic assay of the property, completed an inventory, served the warrant and the notice of seizure — and then left every carton where it sat, because Mr. Cetin declined to sign a bailee's undertaking, per the Affidavit of Jide Ayotade, sworn Apr. 23, 2026, para. 15 and Ex. "J".

Cappadocia Import Turkish Food Inc. was incorporated in Alberta on August 3, 2018 and imported and wholesaled Turkish food products in the province from two addresses in north Edmonton: the warehouse, and a store at 15108 135 Avenue NW that was also its registered office. Its directors and shareholders are Mr. Cetin and Gulten Cetin, per the Trustee's Report to Creditors on Preliminary Administration, Sept. 15, 2026, s. 2.0, paras. 1–2. The bailiff had gone to the store the day before and found it closed; his report notes that the company's Facebook page had advertised a closing-out sale from that address in November 2024, which is what sent him to the second address.

The inventory lists the company gave him run through Baharoglu bulgur in one- and five-kilogram packs, red lentils, freekeh, dried chickpeas, Oncu pepper paste in 700-gram jars and 4.3-kilogram tins, Turkish figs, Ulker biscuits, Domestos cleaners and OMO soap, and then through the housewares the store sold beside the food: hand-made carpets at $200 to $699 apiece, copper coffee pots, stainless steel trays, Turkish towels, backgammon boards. They are headed July 2025, and many of the grocery lines carry an expiry date between July and October of that year. Working from those lists, the bank put the value of its collateral at $115,940.00, per the Affidavit of Jide Ayotade, sworn Apr. 23, 2026, paras. 16–17 and Ex. "K".

The bailiff's office was later instructed to come back, remove the goods and liquidate them. When he reached the warehouse on October 17, 2025, the building was vacant.

Ten months later, on August 12, 2026, Registrar S. Wanke of the Court of King's Bench of Alberta in Bankruptcy and Insolvency adjudged the company bankrupt on RBC's application under s. 43 of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and appointed AlixPartners Restructuring, Inc. trustee of the estate, without security, per the Bankruptcy Order, pronounced Aug. 12, 2026, paras. 2–3. The trustee's first report to creditors, dated September 15, 2026, records that the goods on which the estate's only value depends have not been located, and that the trustee cannot confirm they still exist.

The three facilities, and the demand

RBC lent under a letter of agreement dated November 6, 2023 that set up three facilities: a non-revolving term loan of $735,000 at 7.36% for operating financing, repayable on demand and amortized over 84 months; a revolving demand facility of $500,000 at the bank's prime rate plus 3.00%; and a Business Mastercard limit of $150,000 at 19.99%. The company granted a general security agreement over all present and after-acquired property on November 7, 2023, and the debt was guaranteed by Mr. Cetin and Ms. Cetin under guarantees dated October 7, 2023, limited to a principal sum of $1,385,000.00, per the Affidavit of Jide Ayotade, sworn Apr. 23, 2026, paras. 6–7 and Exs. "C", "G".

The demand of June 24, 2025 itemized what was owed, facility by facility: $520,089.60 on the line of credit, $669,946.35 on a demand loan, $173,707.39 on a demand loan converted from the Business Mastercard, $7,833.51 on another converted from a Canadian-dollar overdraft, and $33,685.26 of demand US-dollar debt converted from an overdraft caused by a documentary letter of credit — the instrument an importer uses to pay a supplier overseas. With $2,500 of legal costs the total was $1,407,762.11 as at June 23, 2025, running at $338.82 a day, and the letter enclosed a notice of intention to enforce security under s. 244(1) of the BIA, per the Affidavit of Jide Ayotade, sworn Apr. 23, 2026, para. 8 and Ex. "F". RBC filed a statement of claim in the Court of King's Bench at Edmonton on August 13, 2025, served it on September 4, and on September 26, 2025 took default judgment for $1,420,843.19 against the company and $1,400,356.42 against the two guarantors, per the Affidavit of Jide Ayotade, sworn Apr. 23, 2026, paras. 3–5, 8 and Exs. "B", "G".

"A midnight move"

The second bailiff's report, dated April 16, 2026, records what he found when he went back for the goods. When the bailiff reached the 104th Avenue premises on October 17, 2025, he telephoned Mr. Cetin, who said the landlord had disposed of all the items and that his trustee was taking care of everything; asked for the trustee's name, he did not provide one. The bailiff re-attended on October 20 and found a notice on the glass door saying the business was permanently closed, and the building empty behind it. The landlord, Gregg Properties Co. Ltd., told him the tenant "did a midnight move," that its records and video footage put the move-out between September 2 and 4, 2025, that it had no knowledge of any intention to vacate and learned of the vacancy only when a member of its staff noticed it, and that the footage did not allow the vehicles used to remove the assets to be identified, per the Affidavit of Jide Ayotade, sworn Apr. 23, 2026, Ex. "J" and the Trustee's Report to Creditors on Preliminary Administration, Sept. 15, 2026, s. 2.1, paras. 4–5.