00:00Today on Forbes, this former billionaire and new U.S. Senator is now broke.
00:08When West Virginia Governor James Conley Justice II finishes out his gubernatorial term in
00:13mid-January and reports to Washington, D.C. to be sworn into the United States Senate,
00:19he will become one of the nation's poorest senators.
00:23But how can that be?
00:24After all, for nearly a decade until 2021, Forbes figured Justice to be a billionaire,
00:29the richest man in the mountain state, thanks to a lifetime amassing a fortune in coal and
00:34real estate, with gems like the historic 710-room Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia's Allegheny
00:40Mountains, with its golf course that has hosted the annual Live Golf tournament.
00:46But a closer look at Justice's finances reveals that his empire is severely troubled.
00:52The Greenbrier, for example, is suffering from years of neglect and may now be worth
00:56less than half the $1 billion value Justice long claimed.
01:00Justice's coal companies, led by Bluestone Resources, still mine about 500,000 tons per
01:06year, but that is down from 2 million tons a decade ago.
01:11They likely generate $150 million in revenues and have an enterprise value less than $200
01:16million.
01:17Those are substantial assets, but Justice's liabilities are much greater.
01:23According to Forbes estimates, Jim Justice is in hock to the tune of more than $1 billion
01:29in the form of personally guaranteed bank loans, debt, court judgments, and environmental
01:34liabilities.
01:35By Forbes' reckoning, the new Republican senator from West Virginia has a net worth
01:40of less than zero.
01:42Justice's attorneys and spokespeople have not responded to Forbes' repeated requests
01:46for comment.
01:49Keeping an eye on every nickel is Justice's most concerned creditor, publicly traded Carter
01:54Bank shares of Martinsville, Virginia, a $4.6 billion-in-assets community bank known as
02:00quote, the home of lifetime free checking.
02:04Justice personally owes Carter some $375 million.
02:09The loans are secured by the first lien on the Greenbrier and many other assets.
02:14When Justice defaulted on his payments in early 2024, Carter announced that it would
02:18hold a public auction of the resort, only calling off the auction in late June after
02:23Justice promised to at least make $2 million in monthly interest payments.
02:28Carter is so concerned over Justice's debts that it has forced the liquidation of Collateral,
02:33including thousands of acres auctioned in Greenbrier and Monroe counties.
02:38Other creditors are also coming for West Virginia's 73-year-old freshman senator.
02:43Last January, Russia's Carolang Investments Limited, which is due $10 million in royalties
02:48on Justice's coal mines, won a court order to seize the Justice family helicopter, which
02:53they sold for $1.4 million.
02:56In June, a court ordered U.S. Marshals to help Carolang seize enough assets from Justice
03:01family coal companies to cover the rest.
03:04Then in October, distressed debt investors McCormick 101 and Beltway Capital of Maryland
03:10also announced an auction of the Greenbrier.
03:12To collect the remaining $20 million, they were owed of a $140 million promissory note
03:18on which Justice had defaulted.
03:20How could Justice, having bought the Greenbrier out of bankruptcy for $20 million in 2009,
03:25now be at risk of losing it?
03:28Because, over a long career of breaking contracts, defying court orders, slow-paying bills, and
03:34paying old loans with new ones, Justice has worn out every lender he has dealt with.
03:40In the Greenbrier case, $49 billion New York City private equity firm Fortress Investment
03:45Group bought the $20 million defaulted loan, which is junior to Carter's claims, and called
03:50off the resort's auction.
03:53Fortress was co-founded in 1998 by billionaires Wes Edens, Mike Novogratz, and others.
03:59In 2017, billionaire Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Vision Fund bought 90% of the Fortress for
04:05$3.3 billion.
04:08SoftBank sold the stake in 2023 for about $3 billion to Mubadala Investment, the $300
04:14billion sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, making this oil-rich Islamic
04:19monarchy one of Senator Justice's most important benefactors.
04:25Michael Pushkin, a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates and chair of the state
04:29Democratic Party, says, quote,
04:31He owes these folks something, and all of a sudden we find out they are foreign nationals?
04:36He's going to be beholden to these folks.
04:39For full coverage, check out Christopher Hellman's piece on Forbes.com.
04:45This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
04:47Thanks for tuning in.
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