A former employee affiliated with Turner Grain Inc. said in a court document filed Monday that the company's principals were "robbing Peter to pay Paul," leading to its bankruptcy in 2014 and costing Arkansas farmers millions of dollars in sales.
Candice Gregory Grist said in an affidavit filed Monday in Lonoke County Circuit Court that she worked for Agri-Petroleum Sales Inc. of Brinkley from 2009 until December 2013. Grist gave the affidavit in Jonesboro on June 22. While her paychecks came from Agri-Petroleum, Grist said, some 95 percent of her work was in regard to Turner Grain Inc., also in Brinkley.
Aside from attorneys in several lawsuits in the case who have claimed in various court filings that money was, at best, mismanaged, Grist is the first employee related to Turner Grain to do so. The Campbell and Grooms law firm in Little Rock, which represents plaintiffs and has sued Turner Grain and other firms in the Circuit Court, had asked Grist for the affidavit. Other lawsuits are pending in federal court.
Turner Grain was shut down in August 2014 when federal inspectors found no grain in the company's elevators despite certificates on the premises saying otherwise. The company filed for bankruptcy two months later, listing liabilities of $24.8 million and assets of $13.8 million.
Grist said Turner Grain and its related companies routinely commingled funds into a money-market account that served as an escrow fund for farmers who were due payments for their grain. She said that fund "often totaled into the millions of dollars." She said some of the money was, at the request of farmers, being carried over to the next year "presumably for tax purposes."
In the affidavit, Grist said Turner executives Jason Coleman and Dale Bartlett offered higher prices to farmers than what Turner Grain eventually would receive in selling the grain to a third party, "to generate more business" and "to cover losses and to further delay the inevitable downfall."
Grist also said money in the farmers' escrow account was sometimes transferred into Turner Grain's operating account, where it was then used to pay the bills of Turner Grain and related companies and also "used to buy real property, equipment, and other miscellaneous property" for Coleman and Bartlett.
"Simply put, Jason Coleman and Dale Bartlett were robbing Peter to pay Paul," Grist said. "Jason Coleman and Dale Bartlett were spending money held for the benefit of farmers."
Grist said that toward the end of Turner Grain's days, "I saw more losses than gains" on completed transactions.
Attorneys for all the parties in the various lawsuits have routinely declined comment on any court filings.
Affidavits are not admissable in court although those who give them can be called to testify and then be subject to cross-examination.
No trial date has been set in the Lonoke County case.
Business on 06/29/2016