O.C. Executive Refuses to Quit Moscow Hotel Post : Partnership: Joint-venture dispute heats up days ahead of White House advance teams’ arrival to scout Radisson.

The battle for control of Moscow’s only American-run hotel took an ugly turn last week as police were called in to evict the Orange County businessman who is one of the directors of the four-star Radisson Slavjanskaya.

As police and hotel security guards hovered outside the door of his three-room suite, Paul E. Tatum and his handful of bodyguards inside vowed to fight the latest attempt to oust him from the troubled U.S.-Russian joint venture.

“If they can get someone to violate the law and come and arrest me, then that’s the only way they’re gonna get me out of here,” Tatum, president of Irvine-based Americom Business Centers, said of the apparent standoff.

The latest clash between Tatum and his partners in the joint venture comes only a few days before White House advance teams are to arrive to scout out the 600-room hotel for a possible stay by President Bill Clinton during his May 9 to 11 summit here.

Americom’s partners in the hotel venture, the Moscow city government and Minneapolis-based Radisson Hotels, claim Tatum owes nearly $300,000 in personal expenses, and has been repeatedly warned to pay up or face eviction.

But during their two-year public feud, Tatum has been accused by his partners of shady financial management and failing to fulfill his business obligations.

“The situation is such that it’s intolerable,” said one hotel official, requesting anonymity. “We’ve asked the other directors of Americom to get involved and appoint a responsible business person as general manager--someone who the joint venture can work with.”

In an interview inside his apartment, Tatum pointed to clauses in Americom’s contract to run the Slavjanskaya’s business center that he said mandated that the expenses in question should in fact be paid by the joint venture. He said the attempted eviction was part of the Moscow government’s larger scheme to nationalize the lucrative Slavjanskaya.

“They stabbed one of my guards less than six weeks ago and gave him a message: ‘It’s high time Paul left for home,’ ” Tatum said. “That’s the kind of tactics (they’re using).”

Tatum had been locked out of the Slavjanskaya for 12 days last year during another round of the increasingly bitter dispute. Friday, hotel staff accompanied by Moscow police changed the locks on Tatum’s office door but failed to force Tatum from his rooms or his staff from their business offices.

The relationship between Americom and Radisson has soured so badly that their partnership, which formed the American half of the joint venture, was ordered dissolved by the U.S. District Court in Minnesota in March.

Friday, Tatum applied for arbitration of the dispute, seeking $35 million from the joint venture if Americom is thrown out of the hotel for good.