Sale of ministry's hotel approved
A bankruptcy judge approves the first liquidation of a seized Greater Ministries asset.
The Tampa Tribune, October 28, 1999
By Michael Fechter
TAMPA - The biggest known asset of a Tampa ministry suspected of running a Ponzi scheme will turn into a $5.5 million pile of cash by this time next week.
One day, that money and other liquidated assets should go to return at least a portion of the money thousands of people lost in Greater Ministries International.
The group bought Kentucky's Executive Inn Hotel in 1997. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Thomas E. Baynes Jr. approved the hotel's sale to an Illinois buyer Wednesday.
Officials expect to close the deal within a week. Most of the money goes to an interest bearing account at Chase Manhattan Bank while investigators tally up all the losses and search for new assets.
``It's just starting,'' said bankruptcy trustee Kevin O'Halloran. He and investigators working with a court appointed receiver find new property each week, he said. They also are searching for offshore accounts where money might be hidden.
Greater Ministries now accuses the receiver of conspiring to ``steal the church's money.'' In a release, the group says it dissolved its corporate status two years ago, so the receivership and bankruptcy are against ``a non-existent dead entity.''
Anyone making claims against it could face a $100 million civil action, the release said.
Greater Ministries legal associate Barbara Ketay attended Wednesday's hearing on the hotel sale but did not raise any objections in court.
John Bays, a Joliet, Ill., real estate developer, plans to spend $6 million to $10 million renovating Executive Inn. He'll start by sprucing up the hotel's exterior before remodeling each hotel room.
``I only buy bankrupt properties. My big deal is to take a loser and turn it around,'' Bays said.
It's music to the ears of Owensboro political and business leaders. The hotel is Kentucky's second largest and the convention and tourism business it attracts drives the area economy.
Greater Ministries and its development arm, Servco, also were initially hailed and welcomed when they surfaced as buyers in late 1996. Then a lien on the property filed by notorious hate-church leader Charles Eidson of Tampa created panic.
Eidson's Church of the Avenger was ``under our umbrella,'' Greater Ministries leader Gerald Payne said at the time.
Eidson now is in federal prison on pollution charges. Payne and six other Greater Ministries officials face a December trial date on a 20-count federal grand jury indictment charging money laundering and fraud.
