LOS ANGELES: US advisers liquidating the Mexican aquatic-theme park operator The Dolphin Company have asked a judge in Delaware for permission to sell some parks, alongside the animals in them, despite an ongoing fight over whether the company’s former chief executive officer (CEO) was wrongly removed.
The company, which filed for bankruptcy last year after lenders removed its longtime CEO, is looking to sell parks in Cancun, Mexico, as well as 87 dolphins and other marine mammals.
Under the supervision of a US court, the Mexico-based company has already sold parks in the United States and Europe.
The Mexican parks have been at the centre of a long-running battle between the lenders and former CEO Eduardo Albor.
A US judge has fined Albor US$10,000 a day for interfering with park operations by diverting cash from ticket sales and allegedly misrepresenting himself in Mexican court filings.
Rodrigo Constandse Cordova, chief executive of competing park owner Delphinus, signed a deal to pay US$20mil for the resorts, according to court documents filed last Friday.
The proposed transaction also includes 87 bottlenose dolphins, six sea lions and eight manatees, court papers showed.
The US judge overseeing the Dolphin Company’s liquidation must approve the sale to Delphinus Blue Planet before it can close.
Before then, US Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein is likely to rule on Albor’s request to dismiss the bankruptcy case, which would open the way for his return.
Albor said in a statement last week that Mexico’s Supreme Court backed him in a recent ruling and that lenders should never have removed him.
In US court papers, he argued that he secured a favourable ruling through a special Mexican appeals process designed to review court decisions for violations of the country’s constitution.
That ruling means all previous court decisions favouring the lenders or American advisers, as well as any actions they took, should be overturned, Albor claimed in a bankruptcy motion filed last month. — Bloomberg
