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transaction pursuant to the final property exchange agreement.10
We next address petitioners’ contention that the cancella-
tion of MHR Properties’ St. Clair property interests was separate
from the final exchange transaction that took place on August 1,
1991. In support of that contention, petitioners maintain that
the only reason that the final property exchange agreement
required Mr. Signom to secure the cancellation of MHR Properties’
leasehold interest and MHR Properties’ purchase option was
because “Mr. Felman needed contractual assurance that the option
would be extinguished.” If, as petitioners assert, the cancella-
tion of MHR Properties’ leasehold interest and MHR Properties’
10The record contains certain documents, including a number
of documents that petitioners filed with their joint return,
which indicate that the date of the cancellation of MHR Proper-
ties St. Clair leasehold interest and/or MHR Properties’ purchase
option was Aug. 1, 1991. For example, in Part IV of Section B of
Form 8283 filed with petitioners’ joint return, Brother Ploeger
acknowledged that the University received the claimed donated
property (MHR Properties’ purchase option) on Aug. 1, 1991. In
addition, the final acknowledgment document that was signed by
petitioners sometime in 1991 or 1992 and by Brother Ploeger on
behalf of the University sometime around Aug. 10, 1994, stated
that the effective date of that document relating to the cancel-
lation of MHR Properties’ leasehold interest, including MHR
Properties’ purchase option, was Aug. 1, 1991. Even petitioners’
appraiser Mr. Nizny, in Mr. Nizny’s letter dated October 13,
1992, and Mr. Nizny’s letter dated August 2, 1994, which purport
to set forth Mr. Nizny’s opinion of the value as of Aug. 1, 1991,
of MHR Properties’ purchase option and MHR Properties’ leasehold
interest, respectively, stated that the “arms-length transaction
on the subject property * * * occurred on July 31, 1991". We are
unwilling to rely on either of those letters or on Mr. Nizny’s
testimony because we found him to be not credible and unreliable.
Nonetheless, those letters are noteworthy in that it must have
been Mr. Signom to whom Mr. Nizny addressed those letters who
informed Mr. Nizny that the “arms-length transaction on the
subject property * * * occurred on July 31, 1991".
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