CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The governor of West Virginia, Jim Justicea Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, is fighting to save his iconic Greenbrier hotel.
A legal notice was published Wednesday in the West Virginia Daily News announcing a public auction for the luxury resort at White Sulphur Springs due to unpaid debts. This is just the latest development in the Justice family’s financial troubles.
Justice, who owns dozens of companies and whose net worth was estimated at $513 million by Forbes magazine in 2021, is accused in numerous lawsuits of late payments on millions of dollars he owes in debts to family businesses and fines for unsafe working conditions at his coal mines.
Justice, who began his first of two terms as governor in 2017, bought The Greenbrier, which has hosted U.S. presidents and royal families, out of bankruptcy in 2009. The PGA Tour held a tournament at the resort from 2010 to 2019.
His family also owns The Greenbrier Sporting Club, a private luxury community with a members-only “resort within a resort.” That property was set to be auctioned this year in an effort by Carter Bank & Trust of Martinsville, Virginia, to recoup more than $300 million in business loans defaulted on by the governor’s family, but a lawsuit between the Justice family and the bank delayed that process.
Wednesday’s announcement said the auction covers 150 acres, including the hotel itself and the adjacent parking lot, and is scheduled for Aug. 27 at 2 p.m. at the Greenbrier County Courthouse in Lewisburg.
A spokesman for Justice said the upcoming auction was not a matter for state government and that the governor’s office would not comment. Campaign officials did not respond to an email from The Associated Press on Thursday.
In a statement to West Virginia MetroNews, attorney Bob Wolford accused lender JPMorgan Chase Bank of aligning with Democrats “to undermine West Virginia’s next Republican senator.”
The statement said the Justice family originally took out a $142 million loan from JPMorgan Chase in 2014 and that after payments made in June of this year, they were left with only $9.4 million in debt.
On July 1, the governor was notified by JPMorgan Chase that it had sold Justice’s loan to Beltway Capital, which declared the company in default.
“Let me be clear that the Greenbrier will not be sold and that the Justice family will take all necessary steps to ensure that there will be no negative impact on their ownership of the Greenbrier or the operations of the Greenbrier and that the Greenbrier’s ability to continue to provide world-class service to its guests will be uninterrupted,” Wolford told MetroNews.
