Bank plans to auction posh property owned by West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice to repay loans

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A Virginia bank that is seeking to recover more than $300 million in longstanding unpaid business loans to the family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is planning to auction off land at a sporting club located at the governor’s posh resort.

Carter Bank & Trust of Martinsville, Virginia, took out a legal notice in the Charleston Gazette-Mail on Tuesday. The notice said that an auction involving the Greenbrier Sporting Club lots is scheduled for March 5 at the Greenbrier County Courthouse in Lewisburg.

The Greenbrier Sporting Club is a private equity club and residential community that opened in 2000. Justice bought The Greenbrier, which has hosted U.S. presidents and royalty, out of bankruptcy in 2009. The PGA Tour held a tournament at the resort from 2010 until 2019.

In a 2021 lawsuit that Justice and his companies filed against Carter Bank, the governor revealed that he is personally on the hook for $368 million in remaining loan debt to that bank. He also said that a close business relationship dramatically fell apart after the death of the bank’s founder, Worth Carter, in 2017. The 2021 lawsuit was later dismissed, but the Justice companies filed another lawsuit against the bank last November.

Justice, who owns dozens of companies, also has been the subject of numerous court claims that he has been late in paying millions of dollars he owes in fines, such as for unsafe working conditions at his coal mines.

Messages left with the governor’s office and with the Justice companies weren’t immediately returned Tuesday afternoon.

Justice, a Republican, is finishing his second term as governor this year and is running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Joe Manchin. Manchin has said he is not seeking reelection.

Last year dozens of properties owned by Justice in three counties were put up for auction as payment for delinquent real estate taxes.

John Raby, The Associated Press