American court hearing recordings and interviews - Season 8. Episode 8. July 7, 2025 Bankruptcy Court Hearing (The Dolphin Company/Leisure Investments Holdings LLC, et al.)

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

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Good afternoon, Your Honor. Sean Griecher from John Connoewey on behalf of the debtors. Your Honor, a couple of opening comments, if I could, return to those motions. Your Honor, we did list the order enforcing the automatic stay as a status conference. We are still facing a lack of cooperation and resistance in connection of access to the company records,

housed in the headquarters. And so the 23rd in the process of collecting, by the end of that week, after further discussions of Mr. Albor's council, we were informed that Mr. Albor would be at the headquarters in Canton to complete this process and to provide the additional information and details regarding the estate funds that were diverted from the better accounts into separate accounts by Mr. Albor through entities known as PES and Elysium. To complete that process.

At the end of the council viz, Mr. Albor himself would be present, and Riveron Mexican Council and various Mexican notaries traveled to Cancun to be at the headquarters on Monday the 30th. We received correspondence from Mr. Al-Bur late on Sunday the 29th, advising that Mr. Al-Bur was not coming, that he had no representatives that would provide us with access to the building that Valeria Al-Bor, his daughter, and Concepcion were not going to be his representatives. He also stated for the first time ever and inconsistent with his prior testimony that he at least the portion of the headquarters, building where the debtors' leave and documents were housed to Concepcion Estabon. You may remember when the control of Doridolphin's group of counsel, but also attended the

depositions of Mr. Albor, Wagstaff and Strom in her capacity as Mr. Albor's personal counsel. Based on this alleged release, Mr. Albor is apparently disclaiming any responsibility for complying with your order to grant access to the records that are in the premises. Ms. Esdivant's part, she has refused to provide access to the records as well, unless the debtors grant her a full release. for any path conduct and also pay her a severance of roughly $600,000. We sent a demand letter to Ms. Estimani at the end of the week. We are pursuing remedies through the Mexican courts. We expect that we will need to bring a motion before you honor,

in the midst of all this, Mr. Albor filed a certification alleging that he has come into compliance with your honor's orders. Suffice it to say we dispute this. We'll be submitting a declaration of Mr. Wagstaff in response to the certification and in connection with any enforcement action required as against Ms. Estabon, on this will be in addition to the submission of costs related to stay enforcement to date that we plan to file in accordance with the enforcement order we expect that all those matters will be brought before you at the hearing scheduled for July 23rd so your honor that is where things stand operationally we're continuing to make

progress you may have seen you did file some sale related motions so we're doing the best we can to continue to move forward it would be nice to have full cooperation and we hope that is. Good afternoon, Your Honor. Can you hear me? Okay? I can. And, Your Honor, thank you again for allowing me to participate in this via Zoom. I know it's typically your preference to have these sort of things in front of you.

I certainly would have if I could. I literally have another matter right after this, and I have a deficit all day tomorrow. So it would have been a little bit difficult, but I do appreciate it, Your Honor. Just briefly, if I could, until I'm out as counsel for Mr. Albor, I did want to make a representation with respect to the status. I do understand that there are some issues with respect to access to certain records that are held in an office of some sort that is being leased by Ms. Esteban. I can represent to you from Mr. Albor that he has not authorized her to block any kind of access. And I think the issue that's going on there has to do with her employment arrangement and she wants releases. I think she wanted a certain amount of money as well.

I don't know the specifics of the leasing arrangement between the two. I'm simply representing that that is what the impediment is, and that Mr. Albor maintains he's not trying to impede their access. They can look at whatever records they want to, but he's not interfering, and that was his statement on that. The other thing I wanted to bring to your attention, Your Honor, well, we didn't file. Mexican Council provided a declaration today pursuant to 44.1.

to simply advise on the status of a certain continuation with respect to an Amparo that was preceding your stay enforcement order to simply explain what was going on there. I can represent to you that because I've seen the communications. Mr. Eduardo was emphatic once your order went in to withdraw Emparros, those ones that have been filed after your stay enforcement order. And we did take quite a bit of time to go through the certification requirements. I even called them each, whether they were negative. obligations or you know affirmative obligations and addressed each one with him so I

imagine those will be dealt with at the 23rd but I just want to make those representations to you your honor and your honor with respect to our motion you know we have a situation obviously which is certainly unfortunate in any case we represented to you purser to the Delaware rules that we do have an issue with non-payment We have an issue with respect to irreconcilable differences as well. And I'm sure Your Honor would like to know a lot more about what the back and forth is going on. I suspect some of the people on this Zoom call would as well. But the issue becomes one of invading the attorney-client privilege,

and I certainly don't want to do anything that would harm my client on an exit. But I would just simply ask Your Honor to understand that we do have those issues here and make my representation as an officer of the court that they, they are such that it requires us to withdraw, Your Honor. And so today I would ask for you to grant our motion to withdraw. Objections were due at the hearing. Is there anyone who'd like to be heard with respect to the request by Mr. Moon's firm to withdraw?

Mr. Gretcher. Just a statement, Your Honor, and it is this Sean Greecher from Young Conaway. As court noted, I'm hearing on the 25th. The need to come back to this court to obtain compliance with the automatic stay, and Your Honor's orders is as a result of Mr. Albor's conduct. The motions today for withdrawal of counsel are similarly as a result of Mr. Albor's conduct. Your Honor scheduled the hearing on July 23rd for further consideration of sanctions arising from Mr. Albor's willful stay violations. We likely have that evidence and potentially evidence of more continuing violations presented at that date.

As Your Honor said on the 25th, given Mr. Albor's continued actions here, The debtors believe it to be of critical importance. We move forward with that evidentiary presentation on 23rd. And we think it's important that that not be delayed as a result of counsel's withdrawal. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, Mr. Bezingtell, your firm has also filed a motion. We like He was in Kellardt's sites, Bezinckel Brown.

Also on behalf of Mr. Albor. We did file a motion as well in the same basis. And unless the court has any questions. court has any questions respectfully be committed to withdraw okay thank you does anyone wish to be heard with respect to the motion followed by mr. beusingtell's firm i will say it's with uh more than a little bit of reluctance that i grant the motions and i say that because um i think quite frankly mr alborneeds counsel in front of this court uh that you firm who are representing him are excellent counsel and have been doing an excellent job for him.

And it's also helpful to the court to have competent counsel representing parties. It's helpful to me in coming to conclusions as to where I and how I ought to rule on certain matters. but I have found Mr. Moon in particular, who has made most of the presentation, very credible in front of me. I have no reason at all to doubt what he has put in his motion with respect to both non-payment and irreconcilable differences, and the same for Mr. Buesenkel and his firm. And so in those circumstances, I feel I need to grant the two motions, which I will do. I will note that Mr. Al Gore, as an individual, can represent himself pro se, which also gives me an ability to grant these motions.

I would not suggest that he do so, however, and would hope that he would make appropriate arrangements with new counsel, with whom he will not have irreconcilable differences and with whom he will pay so that he is represented in front of this court. That being said, we are going forward on July 23rd with the hearing. I previewed that at the last hearing, so it's no surprise to Mr. Albor that he needs to be prepared to go forward, whether he is represented or whether he is representing himself. And in that regard, I will note, as Mr. Moon noted earlier, my hearings are in person with only permitted exceptions in the hearing. narrow circumstances and in evidentiary hearings I can't think of a time where I've granted a request because I need the witnesses on the stand in front of me so that I can gauge their credibility among other things so that hearing is going forward and

hopefully Mr. Albor will have new counsel but if he doesn't it's still going forward So those two motions, as I said, they're granted. We'll get the orders on the docket this afternoon. Thank you, Your Honor. Anything else for today? There is not. I don't see anything else on the agenda. We're adjourned. We've all done it.

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