By Steven Allen Adams, The Parkersburg News and Sentinel
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A day after it was announced that properties at the Greenbrier Sporting Club owned by Gov. Jim Justice were set to go on the auction block, Justice urged the public not to worry about his businesses, while Justice’s top GOP opponent for U.S. Senate drew attention to the impending sale.
Speaking during his weekly administration briefing Wednesday at the State Capitol Building, Justice acknowledged that Virginia-based Carter Bank and Trust issued notice in local newspapers Tuesday about an auction of properties associated with the Greenbrier Sporting Club in White Sulphur Springs scheduled for Tuesday, March 5, on the steps of the Greenbrier County Courthouse in Lewisburg.
“When you hear the real truth, you’re going to be appalled. That’s all there is to it,” Justice said. “I will tell you that Carter Bank has been terrible; beyond belief, terrible more than your wildest dreams, and we’re not going to put up with it anymore.”
Justice said confidentiality agreements prohibit him from talking in detail about the legal disagreements with Carter Bank, but he said the bank is doing him and his family wrong after a more than 20-year relationship going back to his friendship with the bank’s founder, Worth Carter.
“We absolutely were the greatest of friends, and I gave the eulogy at Worth Carter’s funeral because everyone knew how close we were and that’s what the family wanted me to do,” Justice said. “Then Worth Carter dies and the bank turns upside-down and turns 1,000% in a 180-degree direction. Since that time, we’ve been paralyzed in our businesses over and over and over by the activities of this bank.”
The auction is meant to satisfy more than $300 million in personal loan guarantees to Carter Bank owed by Justice, First Lady Cathy Justice, and son Jay Justice. In a hearing in the circuit court of Martinsville, Va., last month, a judge rejected arguments by attorneys for the Justice family trying to block collection of the multi-million-dollar debt owed to the company.
