A court-appointed receiver is filing contempt in court against a Canadian-owned swine operation in South Dakota.
The company in question, Sunterra, is under investigation for an alleged check-kiting scheme that left the business millions in debt an unable to afford day-to-day operations.
U.S. District Court Judge Eric Schulte placed Sunterra’s pigs and daily operations under the direction of livestock-management company called Pipestone. He also gave Pipestone the power to investigate the alleged financial fraud.
Pipestone said they’ve had trouble accessing Sunterra’s data. They filed a motion in court, worried the data was being destroyed or manipulated.
Sunterra said all the information pertaining to the US companies is available to Pipestone. The Canadian entities, however, are not in the suit so there might be a jurisdictional issue to obtain any of that data.
Schulte said he wants the parties to try to resolve the issue by Wednesday before any further order is made. He also wants clarity on Sunterra’s corporate structure.
