3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Independent
Proposal to US court could finally clear the way for completion of Clanwilliam sale
The sale – agreed in March – could clear the way for a more than $300m (€257m) payout to the victims of convicted US fraudster Greg Lindberg – who became Clanwilliam's biggest shareholder after an acquisition in 2014.
The Irish firm was in no way involved in Lindberg's high-profile $2bn fraud case but the proceeds generated by Clanwilliam's sale is seen as one of the biggest likely sources of recovery for victims of Lindberg's fraudulent activities, to which he pleaded guilty in 2024.
Attorney Joseph W Grier of Grier Wright Martinez was appointed in January by a US court as special master in the case and tasked with identifying, liquidating and distributing the proceeds of Lindberg's assets.
In his latest court filings to the US District Court for the Western District of North Carolina as part of a consent motion, Grier has set out a proposal to allow the Clanwilliam sale to complete and estimated that the proceeds of the sale of Clanwilliam to TA Associates will total $318m, depending on currency movements.
According to Grier, completion of the sale of Clanwilliam has been held up by various injunctions and legal cases, including one taken by Lindberg himself.
He described the proposal as a 'hard-fought solution to the Clanwilliam dilemma, which seizes a rare opportunity to put significant recoveries into the hands of key victim constituencies, especially considering that victims have struggled to collect from [Lindberg], including individual policyholder victims'.
Sources said they were hopeful that the sale may be completed within weeks. The proposed sale has already been cleared by Ireland's Competition and Consumer Protection.
The legal files lodged in recent days by Grier with a court in North Carolina say that $20m – or just over 5pc – is to be set aside from the proceeds of the sale for Irish tax liabilities linked to the sale.
Clanwilliam was set up as Helix Health by Irish entrepreneur Howard Beggs and was bought by Lindberg in 2014 for a reported €45m using an Irish company, Triton Financial.
This led to the creation of a trust that held the assets of Clanwilliam Group and Lindberg used this structure to buy a large number of companies outside of the US.
ADVERTISEMENT
Learn more
Lindberg, who was a high-profile political donor in the US, was charged in 2023 with up to $2bn in fraud against insurance companies in both Bermuda and North Carolina and their policyholders.
In a plea agreement, Lindberg had agreed to pay full restitution to all the victims of his fraud.
Lindberg had 'amassed ownership in a complicated web of hundreds of companies across various industries financed through an even more complicated web of lending arrangements with Defendant's insurance company affiliates that the Special Master is only beginning to understand', wrote Greer in his latest motion to the court.
Grier said in the document that closing the Clanwilliam transaction would provide some more immediate relief to victims 'given the impediments to closing and fearing the loss of an opportunity to provide meaningful value' to Lindberg's victims in the near future.
A spokeswoman for Clanwilliam insisted in a statement that a definitive agreement has been signed whereby the sale would go ahead,
'As is customary for multinational transactions of this scale, the transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and the transaction details will remain confidential until the regulatory process is complete.'
