CHARLESTON — U.S. marshals are being instructed to seize a 2009 Bell helicopter belonging to a company owned by Gov. Jim Justice and his family because of unpaid debt.
Caroleng Investments Limited, parent company to the Russian mining company Mechel that bought and sold properties with Justice, is seeking the seizure over a debt of $8.4 million already recognized and awarded in the federal court system.
A supplemental writ of execution filed in federal court Thursday instructs marshals to seize the helicopter located at the Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport in Virginia “or elsewhere in this district, including all logs and records, all accessories, attachments, parts, repairs, additions, accessories, substitutions, exchanges related to the helicopter.”
And, “it is further authorized, in enforcement of this writ, for the United States Marshal and/or Judgment Creditor enter a secured space, if necessary, by force, to seize the judgment debtor’s property.
This is all an outcome of a judgment against Bluestone Resources, a Justice company, in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware on June 7, 2021.
In addition to the $8.4 million judgment, Caroleng is entitled to pre-award interest of $1.7 million, which brings the full amount to $10.1 million. The judgment also calls for 9% interest to pile up until the debt is resolved.
The dispute is an aspect of a long-running deal gone sideways.
Caroleng Investments Limited was a parent company to Russian-based Mechel Bluestone in February 2015, when Justice bought back the property.
Justice sold the family’s coal assets to Mechel in May 2009 for $436 million in cash and 83.3 million preferred shares of Mechel stock. Justice then bought Bluestone back in 2015 for $5 million.
The mines had closed under Mechel, but Justice reopened them.
The deal to buy back the Bluestone properties included a provision to pay Caroleng $3 a ton in royalty payments for mined coal, along with defined portions of future sales.
In court filings, Caroleng said Bluestone withheld the royalty payments.
Bluestone contended that it had withheld money as “setoffs” against amounts that it overpaid Caroleng. Caroleng countered that there was a clause in the companies’ 2015 sale agreement that prevented Bluestone from keeping “setoff” payments.
A three-person panel for the International Chamber of Commerce arbitrated the case in Paris, France, in October 2019, two years into Justice’s first term as governor. The panel awarded the $8.4 million plus interest after concluding Bluestone had “materially breached” multiple aspects of the agreement with Mechel.
Caroleng pressed the issue again in court after time went by without payment, and now the marshals are being sent to seize a helicopter.
Justice, a candidate for U.S. Senate, broadly discussed the liabilities of his family-owned companies during a news briefing.
He was responding to a mandatory financial disclosure that showed millions of dollars in personal liabilities. Justice said his family makes good on those debts.
“You’ll see a family that has worked really, really, really hard — a family that, at one time, if you’re really fair and you’ll step back from it, you’ll say ‘Well, when things were really tough, why didn’t they take bankruptcy like every coal company almost in the land that was in trouble that wrote off hundreds and hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.’ And we didn’t do it,” he said.
“There’s no big pots of gold sitting around. Absolutely, at the end of the day, you can see that. And from that you can see a family that sometimes are a little late on a bill and everything, but we pay them, don’t we?”
