Resort property owners suing an international banking giant over allegations of a loan-to-own scheme say the financial firm has wrongly sealed thousands of pages of documents in the court case, and they want the documents made public.
The multi-billion dollar federal lawsuit was brought by property owners at resorts in the West and in the Bahamas against the bank Credit Suisse and real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. The plaintiffs claim Credit Suisse set up an offshore branch to skirt U.S. rules, appraised resorts at inflated prices and then provided loans based on those appraisals, with the aim to foreclose on the properties when the owners couldn’t repay the loans.
Credit Suisse has denied those allegations, with its attorneys saying the legal action was based on absurd claims from people who never actually borrowed money from the bank.
The complicated lawsuit has been chugging through federal court in Boise since 2010, brought by investors in Idaho’s Tamarack Resort, the Yellowstone Club in Montana, Nevada’s Lake Las Vegas resort and the Ginn Sur Mer Resort in the Bahamas.
