West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice and his family have averted a planned auction of The Greenbrier resort slated for early next week, delaying it by at least two months. But problems around the Justice-owned luxury destination continue to pile up.
Just this week, reports surfaced that the Greenbrier Hotel Corp. hadn’t been submitting money taken out of employee checks to cover health insurance premiums to the insurance provider for at least the past four months. The company claims that if those payments, totaling around $2.4 million, aren’t made, employees could lose their health insurance coverage.
According to their own legal filing in an effort to delay the auction, attorneys for The Greenbrier say the resort employs about 2,000 people. According to news reports, more than 600 of those employees receive health insurance benefits through The Greenbrier.
There’s also the matter of liens placed on the resort because of collected sales taxes that haven’t been remitted to the state.
Now, West Virginia MetroNews and West Virginia Watch are reporting that Greenbrier Hotel Corp. failed to repay a $35 million loan approved in 2020 through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
According to those reports, a lawsuit filed against The Greenbrier last month by the loan provider, First Guaranty Bank, alleges that the loan was in default late last year, after The Greenbrier failed to make its December payment. The bank claims Greenbrier Hotel Corp. now owes $36 million, when including accrued interest on the loan and fees for delinquent payments.
With all of these problems surfacing so quickly, it begs the question what else might be going wrong at The Greenbrier that no one yet knows about.
Meanwhile, Justice, who has a wide array of business interests in the state, is winding down his second term as governor and is hoping to be elected to the U.S. Senate in November. He claims all of these problems have been manufactured or played up by Democrats as some sort of cynical political attempt to derail his Senate campaign.
The truth, though, is that what is happening now at The Greenbrier resort is no different from countless other examples of loan defaults, ignored court settlements, fines, fees and even health insurance problems at multiple businesses owned by the Justice family. These cases have been well documented, but Justice has somehow managed to keep his deadbeat shell game running.
The only difference this time is that it’s happening at The Greenbrier resort — the posh West Virginia landmark that Justice bought out of bankruptcy and saved in 2009.
As has been mentioned before, when Justice’s name comes up, The Greenbrier resort is one of the first things people think of — second perhaps only to the governor’s dog. Heck, Justice wouldn’t even leave his home near the resort in White Sulphur Springs to live in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä, as the West Virginia Constitution stipulates the governor must, even after he agreed to reside at the seat of government as part of a lawsuit settlement.
Buying The Greenbrier made Justice famous — and the current problems at the resort could very well make him infamous. It’s not a political problem, it’s more of a metaphorical one. People can not only get their heads around this one, but it’s also a metaphorical last bastion of Justice’s status and his desire for West Virginians to see him as someone who wants to help the state.
