Trustee questions GNP’s solvency Forensic accountant may be key

BANGOR – A Portland man with a national reputation as a forensic accountant soon may be analyzing every decimal point and dollar sign contained in 700 boxes of records pertaining to the financial operations of the former Great Northern Paper Co.

What the forensic accountant will be looking for is whether Great Northern was financially insolvent in May 2001, a year and a half before the company filed for bankruptcy, according to court documents filed last week.

If it was insolvent, then the trustee overseeing Great Northern’s bankrupt estate might have the needed documentation to go to U.S. Bankruptcy Court and prove that land transfers conducted in June 2001 between Great Northern and its parent company, Inexcon Maine, and its owner, Lambert Bedard, were fraudulent.

“There’s an element that we would have to prove for a fraudulent transfer. It’s insolvency,” said David Sherman, the Portland attorney representing the trustee, attorney Gary Growe of Bangor.

If successful in proving fraud, Growe then would try to convince a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge that Katahdin Federal Credit Union is not entitled to be repaid $3.2 million in loans to Inexcon Maine and Bedard that were secured with the transferred land. The payment would come from the proceeds of the $103 million sale of Great Northern’s assets in late May.

As trustee, Growe can ask Bankruptcy Court for permission to pursue legal actions that he believes may be in the best financial interest of all of Great Northern’s creditors.

Late last week, Growe filed an application in Bankruptcy Court to hire forensic accountant R. Steven Thing of Portland. Growe’s application to hire Thing has not been scheduled for consideration by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Louis H. Kornreich.

Thing, a certified public accountant and inactive attorney with a master’s degree in business administration, would be hired at $200 an hour plus expenses to pore over Great Northern’s records, according to Growe’s application. His extensive resume includes offering accounting or financial advice in the bankruptcies of 32 Maine-based companies since 1980.

Besides looking for evidence of possible financial insolvency at Great Northern more than two years ago, Thing would assist Growe in “such other matters pertaining to the prosecution of claims of the estate,” according to court documents.

“The trustee believes that Thing is qualified by his experience to assist the estate in providing the indicated services,” Growe said in court documents.

Thing’s task will be tremendous. Earlier this month, Growe called Great Northern “one of the largest business concerns in the state [that] over its business life generated an extraordinary number of business records.”

Katahdin Federal Credit Union is seeking reimbursement for the defaulted loans in two courts.

Recently, a Superior Court judge in Bangor ruled that Inexcon Maine and Bedard are responsible for paying back the loans.

But the credit union also is pursuing repayment from the proceeds of the sale of Great Northern’s assets through federal Bankruptcy Court in case Inexcon Maine and Bedard don’t pay up.

In April, Judge Kornreich ruled that Katahdin Federal had to give up its collateral rights to the properties so that they could be returned to Great Northern. The properties, which included a landfill, were needed to complete the $103 million sale of Great Northern to Brascan Corp. of Toronto.

Kornreich, however, ordered that enough money be set aside from the sale proceeds to cover reimbursement of Katahdin Federal’s loans pending the outcome of litigation at a later date on whether the credit union is entitled to the money from the bankrupt estate.

A trial has been scheduled for March, but Katahdin Federal, armed with its victory from Superior Court, is actively seeking a favorable judgment before then from Kornreich.

Brascan, which so far has reopened one of the two Great Northern mills it bought and renamed Katahdin Paper Co., would not have been able to start up the mills’ paper machines without having the nearby landfill in its possession.

In the meantime, Growe received approval from Kornreich a couple of weeks ago to move the 700 boxes of financial documents from a Millinocket office building to Bangor. Growe needed Kornreich’s permission to spend at least $3,000 to hire Central Maine Moving and Storage of Bangor. The job will require four people and two trucks at a cost of $135 an hour.

“The trustee believes the proposed services are vital to the continued administration of this case and that the costs are both reasonable and necessary,” Growe stated in court documents.

Katahdin Paper has kept the records under security, but now the company wants to rent the storage space to someone else. Katahdin wants them removed by Sept. 1.

Growe, in court documents, said moving the records to the Coe Building in downtown Bangor, the same building that houses his office, would put them in a place where he would have “sole control” over them.

“This would insure the security and integrity of the records and would, over the life of this case, reduce the cost associated with travel to and from the current site in Millinocket,” Growe stated in court documents.