- Green Bay Press Gazette: WEDC seeks records on De Pere business’ unpaid loans
The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., Montreal-based Cliffton Equities Inc. and De Pere-area physician Dr. Marco Araujo sued Green Box NA and its president, Ronald Van Den Heuvel, on May 20 seeking repayment of more than $5.7 million in loans. They claim Green Box is near insolvency, worry it cannot cure its many defaults and suspect the company offered the same collateral to multiple financiers.
“Van Den Heuvel’s casual commingling of assets and collateral among his many entities gives rise to a real concern that he will dispose of plaintiff’s collateral improperly or that collateral may not exist,” the plaintiffs’ initial complaint states.
On Monday, Van Den Heuvel’s attorney John Petitjean told Circuit Court Judge Thomas Walsh that Van Den Heuvel cannot provide many documents court-appointed receiver Michael Polsky has requested because Brown County Sheriff’s Office deputies executed a search warrant at Green Box’s De Pere offices and removed five truckloads of documents and computer equipment from Green Box’s offices in the last month.
“It’s a physical impossibility,” Petitjean said. “The paper and computer records are not in our possession.”
Attorneys for Polsky, Cliffton Equities and Araujo present at the hearing said Van Den Heuvel has provided incomplete lists of debts and creditors to the receiver, whose job is to manage the company and its assets on behalf of the court. They had asked Walsh for a hearing to prove Van Den Heuvel hadn’t fully cooperated.
But after a short conference, Petitjean said his client would provide what he could within 10 days.
Green Box has been under scrutiny since the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported earlier this month that Van Den Heuvel failed to disclose prior business lawsuits to WEDC in a 2011 loan application. The agency approved the loan after a background check failed to identify the lawsuits.
A review of Brown County Circuit Court records by Press-Gazette Media identified multiple civil lawsuits filed by creditors against Van Den Heuvel’s companies for failing to repay loans and investors.
The newspaper version of the article adds:
WEDC provided the $1.1 million loan to Green Box NA LLC in 2011 in exchange for a pledge to create 115 jobs by Dec. 31, 2014.
The company stopped making payments in 2013, got the loan terms restructured in 2014 and WEDC declared the company in default in March. …
Brown County court records indicate that SC Acquisitions LLC of Winnetka, Ill., sought repayment of $28.3 million in a 2010 mortgage foreclosure case filed against four Van Den Heuvel companies – Eco Fibre Inc., Custom Paper Products Inc., Partners Concepts Development Inc., and Tissue Products Technology Corp.
The company’s struggle to repay existing debt didn’t stop Van Den Heuvel from continuing to pursue loans from WEDC. …
A WEDC statement on Green Box indicates it authorized Green Box’s 2011 loan less than a month after the quasi-public agency was created [by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker].
So Ron Van Den Heuvel deceitfully applied for WEDC loans without admitting that he and his companies had lost major lawsuits surrounding his failed partnership with Oneida Nation High School Principal Artley Skenandore and Oneida Seven Generations Corporation in the Nature’s Way toilet paper company fiasco in which Ron Van Den Heuvel and Artley Skenandore were both found to have violated Wisconsin tax laws.
As for “casual commingling of assets and collateral among…many entities,” isn’t that exactly what Oneida Seven Generations Corporation and its subsidiaries – inculding Green Bay Renewable Energy LLC, Oneida Energy Inc., Oneida Energy Blocker Corp. and Oneida-Kodiak Construction LLC – have been up to all along?
It’s time for the State of Wisconsin, the BIA, HUD, and the FBI to investigate that, and the City of Green Bay must support that request should the Oneida Business Committee be foolish enough to even think about suing Green Bay for damages that OSGC incurred.
Oneida Eye readers might recall that Ron Van Den Heuvel’s counsel, Atty. John Petitjean, represented Oneida Business Committee Chair Cristina Danforth in her recent bankruptcy proceedings until he withdrew due to her failure to file a Bankruptcy Notice in a timely manner as agreed.
Neither the Green Bay Press Gazette nor the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mention the $17 million in tax problems that Ron Van Den Heuvel has caused his own family and their companies, nor did either mention Wisconsin Eastern District Judge William Griesbach’s July 7, 2014, issuance of Certification of an $8 million judgment against Ron Van Den Heuvel’s Green Box NA in favor of Cargill Inc. in Case No. 14CV1733 regarding a lawsuit originating in the U.S. District Court in Minnesota.
If you need any more evidence of exactly what kind of obnoxious blowhard Ron Van Den Heuvel really is, get a load of his arrogant and deceitful comments below:
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker calls for legal steps to recover bad state loans
The state should use any legal tools available to recover some $1.7 million in bad loans made to two companies that didn’t share their financial problems with the state, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Monday, while declining to say whether a criminal investigation of the cases was needed.
“We should [use] any legal means necessary to do that,” Walker said of recovering the money from the businesses.
The Republican governor looked on Monday as the board of the jobs agency he helped create four years ago met for the first time without him serving as chairman.
As Walker pursues his presidential campaign and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. faces continued critical news stories about the loans and a nonpartisan audit, the governor proposed and then signed a budget provision removing him as the chairman of the board.
But one of the business executives on the board as well as two Democratic lawmakers said they were disturbed by recent news reports about WEDC continuing to work into last year with companies that had not disclosed their financial troubles to the agency.
A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review found that WEDC failed to run adequate checks and gave two awards worth more than $1.2 million to a financially troubled De Pere businessman who had not disclosed his money problems to the state. Despite those omissions in 2011 and 2012, WEDC kept working with Ron Van Den Heuvel and his…company, Green Box, into 2014, state records show.
There is no record so far of WEDC notifying the City of De Pere about the company’s money troubles even though Green Box was working with the city in an unsuccessful attempt to get federally tax-exempt bonds — in part to repay the state’s soured loan.
Dan Ariens, the chief executive officer of power equipment maker Ariens Corp. of Brillion and a Walker donor, was chosen to replace the governor. …
But Democrats on the board responded that WEDC’s problems were not in its distant past, noting how the agency had continued to work with Green Box and BCI.
[Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) said] “[WEDC] continued to pursue gathering other federal funds for this company even knowing how troubled they are.”
Sen. Julie Lassa (R-Stevens Point) agreed and called for the resignation of WEDC Chief Executive Officer Reed Hall. …
[Ron Van Den Heuvel, a] financially troubled businessman who has since defaulted on more than $1.2 million in loans from Wisconsin’s flagship jobs agency voiced frustration with state officials for not giving him more money.
Ron Van Den Heuvel wrote to an official with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation in spring to say his [waste] energy company, Green Box, was “disappointed” it had not received more money from the agency.
“Green Box is disappointed in the amount of assistance we got bringing in $200,000,000 of capitol and 500 manufacturing jobs in to the state of Wisconsin,” Van Den Heuvel wrote.
Those figures are disputed by the state, who say the company created a small fraction of the jobs numbers he cited.
The De Pere businessman, who did not disclose his problems to the state when he applied for the loans, suggested that Wisconsin’s lagging job creation figures may be the result of failing to give more money to companies like Green Box.
“In 5 other states that Green Box is building new facilities with less jobs, no one is under $17,000,000 of assistance,” Van Den Heuvel wrote in the March 21 letter. “Now reading in the Milwaukee newspaper that Wisconsin new job growth is lagging other states, maybe there’s a reason.”
Despite Van Den Heuvel’s omissions in 2011 and 2012, Gov. Scott Walker’s administration kept working with him and Green Box into 2014. But he made it clear he wasn’t impressed with their efforts.
“Green Box supports Governor Walker’s programs everywhere and cannot understand why this program is lacking behind the other states,” he wrote in the letter to Steve Sabatke, an economic development consultant with WEDC. “The other states business development and jobs area promotional personnel are more persistent, aggressive and hardworking; maybe that’s why they are winning.”
It’s the second case disclosed in recent weeks in which WEDC failed to catch omissions by businesses about their troubled finances and then continued to work with them. And it’s the latest sign of woes that have plagued the troubled agency, which is scheduled to have a board meeting in Oshkosh Monday. …
Despite the troubles with Green Box, WEDC suggested a company representative go on a May trip to East Africa as recently as March of this year.
On March 20 — just one day before Van Den Heuvel voiced concern that Green Box hadn’t received more money — Katy Sinnott, the vice president of the Division of International Business Development, wrote in a letter to Green Box’s human resources director that the agency was planning a trade venture to Tanzania and Kenya.
“Your project is extremely exciting and we are proud to have Green Box in Wisconsin making a difference in waste management,” she wrote to Phil Reinhart. “I look forward to hearing more about the next project — cleaning the seas!”
More like cleaning out investors’ & taxpayers’ pockets.
Does Ron Van Den Heuvel still think he’s ‘winning’? He must be drinking too much tiger blood to think he has the right to be ‘disappointed’ because people weren’t foolish enough to give him even more money to blow. (Or was it to ‘invest’ darkly in other politicians and phony economic development fronts?)
See also:
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel update: Troubled De Pere firm that received WEDC loan now under criminal scrutiny
