HELENA, Mont. — A former billionaire jailed for seven weeks for not following a court order has turned over more than 9,000 pages of documents he says explains what happened to $13.8 million he made in the sale of a Mexican resort.
Yellowstone Club founder Tim Blixseth has been detained since April 20, after U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon issued a civil contempt order because Blixseth had not fully accounted for the Tamarindo resort sale tied to the club’s bankruptcy case.
Blixseth’s attorneys renewed their request for his release Thursday when they filed the documents that detail individual payments and money transfers to Blixseth’s various companies and banks.
The financial statements show to the penny every transaction related to the Tamarindo sale, Blixseth attorney Phillip Stillman said Friday.
Haddon did not immediately free Blixseth, but gave the creditors’ trustee in the bankruptcy case until June 12 to review the documents and respond.
Stillman said he would request Blixseth’s immediate release in an emergency filing to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“There’s absolutely no justification for keeping him in custody another day, and no justification for the other side to weigh in on the order — and give them eight days to do it,” Stillman said.
Kevin Barrett, a partner at trustee Brian Glasser’s law firm Bailey Glasser, said he expects to take the full amount of time the judge granted to review the financial documents.
“I think before then, I’m not going to comment on what he’s filed or whether it meets the judge’s requirements or not,” Barrett said.
Blixseth included a personal statement with the documents that said he is in solitary confinement in the Cascade County Detention Facility with no access to a computer and his phone calls limited to 15 minutes.
The conditions have made it difficult to comply with the judge’s order, and it took four weeks for an accounting firm his wife hired to prepare the financial documents, Blixseth wrote.
Stillman said his 65-year-old client requested solitary confinement because of the jail’s overcrowded conditions and possible threats to his safety.
Blixseth is a Washington state resident who founded the Yellowstone Club, an exclusive Montana resort for the ultra-rich. The Yellowstone Club filed for bankruptcy in 2008, and creditors say Blixseth owes them $286 million he took from the club for his personal use.
Blixseth sold the Mexico property in the state of Jalisco in defiance of a court order and later said he no longer had the money. The documents claim he received $13.8 million from the sale of the property — which he bought for $40 million — and then spent $13.9 million through his various companies.
