Len Barrie in more hot water today

Posted Sep 2, 2009 by Erik Erlendsson

Updated Sep 2, 2009 at 11:39 AM

Lightning co-owner Len Barrie is being accused of some shady business dealings involving his Bear Mountain Resort and using resort funds to pay for his share of the Lightning ownership stake. The Globe and Mail has been on top of this the past couple of days speaking to former and alleged current auditors along with executives with Bear Mountain, and it doesn’t sound good.

While Barrie continues to deny that he has done anything wrong, or that anything that he has done financially has all been paid back, others refute that. The latest comes in this exerpt:

—-Scott Bye, a financial adviser to a group of NHL players who was appointed to Bear Mountain’s executive committee after the players became concerned about its finances, said yesterday that Barrie, the chief executive officer of Bear Mountain, owes the company “between $16-million and $20-million dollars.”

Barrie told The Globe and Mail on Monday that all of the money in question was either paid back or accounted for, following a damning report by the company’s auditor, but Bye said yesterday this was not true.

“To my knowledge, zero,” Bye said in a telephone interview from his office in Fargo, N.D., when he was asked how much of the disputed money was paid back by Barrie.

Also, while Barrie said in a message to the Tribune yesterday that he is still working on things trying to buy-out Lightning co-owner Oren Koules, the Globe and Mail also reports that Barrie has already sent a letter to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman informing the league that he has not been able to put together a plan, something that has been indicated to me to be accurate. The newspaper also says that Koules already has a plan in place to present to the league as soon as next week to buy out Barrie from his stake in the team.