Bankrupt Aquatic Parks Selling Dolphins Amid Fight With E CEO
(Bloomberg) -- US advisers liquidating the Mexican aquatic-theme parks operator The Dolphin Company asked a judge in Delaware for permission to sell some parks, alongside
(Bloomberg) -- US advisers liquidating the Mexican aquatic-theme parks operator The Dolphin Company asked a judge in Delaware for permission to sell some parks, alongside the animals in them, despite an ongoing fight over whether the company’s former chief executive officer was wrongly removed. The company, which filed for bankruptcy last year after lenders removed its longtime CEO, is looking to sell parks in Cancun, Mexico, as well as 87 dolphins and other marine mammals. Under the supervision of a US court, the Mexico-based company has already sold parks in the US and Europe. The Mexican parks have been at the center of a long-running battle between the lenders and former CEO Eduardo Albor. A US judge has fined Albor $10,000 a day for interfering with park operations by diverting cash from ticket sales and allegedly misrepresenting himself in Mexican court filings. Rodrigo Constandse Córdova, chief executive of competing park owner Delphinus, signed a deal to pay $20 million for the resorts, according to court documents filed Friday.
The proposed transaction also includes 87 bottlenose dolphins, six sea lions and eight manatees, court papers show. The US judge overseeing the Dolphin Company’s liquidation must approve the sale to Delphinus Blue Planet before it can close. Before then, US Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein is likely to rule on Albor’s request to dismiss the bankruptcy case, which would open the way for his return. Albor said in a statement last week that Mexico’s Supreme Court backed him in a recent ruling and that lenders should never have removed him. In US court papers, he argued that he secured a favorable ruling through a special Mexican appeals process designed to review court decisions for violations of the country’s constitution. That ruling means all previous court decisions favoring the lenders or American advisers, as well as any actions they took, should be overturned, Albor claimed in a bankruptcy motion filed last month. The lenders and American advisers dispute Albor’s claims about the Supreme Court and the special appeals process, known in Mexico as amparo.
In their objection, they told the US bankruptcy judge that Albor has repeatedly lost his cases in Mexico. The former CEO also faces accusations that he threatened an opposing lawyer and withheld information that could have prevented a dolphin’s death. In a series of text messages sent in March, Albor called a lawyer for the American advisers a “pig,” a “castrated dog” and a “third-rate gangster.” Albor, a corporate lawyer-turned-entrepreneur, sent the Spanish-language messages days after he was released from a Mexico City jail earlier this year. He had been held for a week after failing to appear in criminal proceedings related to a dispute with lenders and the company’s restructuring advisers. The American advisers who have controlled the Dolphin Company since Albor was removed last year say his WhatsApp messages are part of a pattern of abusive and harassing behavior that has cost the company at least $4 million and interfered with efforts to sell its assets. Albor testified last week in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, acknowledging the text messages while arguing that his removal from the company was legally flawed.
The BriefWire