Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
Loyal PAY DIRT readers will likely remember Global Energy Producers LLC. It’s the company that gave $325,000 to the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action last year. We reported on its opaque corporate structure and its plans to cash in on Trump administration energy-policy plans.
Last we heard from GEP, it was fighting a subpoena in a court in Florida, where a former business partner of GEP executive Lev Parnas is trying to collect more than $500,000 owed to him from a previous federal court judgment.
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The company’s spokesman denied up and down that it was not complying with the subpoena for financial records, despite blowing way past the court-ordered deadline to turn those documents over to opposing counsel. GEP claimed it was just negotiating over the scope of the subpoena.
Just a few weeks later, it was clear that was nonsense.
Igor Fruman, another GEP executive, was slated to be deposed by opposing attorneys in early January. At 10 p.m. the night before his deposition, Fruman’s attorney claimed he had a fever and would need to reschedule. They set a new date two weeks later.
The day before that rescheduled deposition, Fruman and Parnas filed motions for protective orders, asking the judge in the case to spare them from the prying eyes of opposing counsel. The judge has yet to rule on those motions.
In the meantime, though, the attorney for Michael Pues, the former Parnas business partner seeking to collect his six-figure debt, has filed a motion seeking to compel Fruman’s testimony, and alleging that he, Parnas, GEP, and their attorneys are attempting to keep under wraps information that the court has already ordered into the public domain.
“As a result of [Parnas’ and Fruman’s attorneys’] unreasonable and intentional conduct to prevent Fruman’s deposition and the filing of the bad faith motions for protective order… court intervention is necessary,” Pues’ attorney wrote.
We’ll keep you updated on further developments in this case. We still hope that it will eventually provide some new information on the interests behind this new political heavyweight.
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