The arguments and procedures of Financement Projets Québec (FPQ), currently appealing the acceptance of the proposal from businessman Réal Bouclin, still under the protection of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, have been harshly criticized Wednesday, on the third day of hearing in the Superior Court of Quebec.
“Inadmissible”, “ill-founded”, “unreasonable”, “abusive”, “excessive”, “quarant”… These are all adjectives that the lawyers of the creditors, the bankruptcy trustee and Réal Bouclin will have used -even to oppose FPQ’s efforts to convince Judge Michel A. Pinsonnault of the justice of his request.
“A legal hassle”
“We are embarking on a completely disproportionate legal mess which completely ignores the guiding principles of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, [laquelle] advocates the effectiveness of the proposal and claims processing process,” argued lawyer Stéphane Hébert, representative of MNP, trustee in the case.
“It is unacceptable to proceed in this way; […] it is done to harm the proposal process, to harm Réal Bouclin and it is clearly a personal vendetta,” launched one of the Lavery prosecutors, representative of the fallen businessman.
“What Financement Projets Québec wants is not answers to its questions, it is to bankrupt Réal Bouclin,” he continued, emphasizing the costs generated by these procedures. The costs spent on these hearings mean that the creditors will have less money as a dividend at the end of the day.”
Debts of $212 million
Struggling with personal debts of more than $212 million, the former president of Groupe Sélection filed for protection under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act in August 2023.
The following May 28, a composition proposal, a total reimbursement of $10.65 million or 5% of the total debts, was accepted by a majority of creditors.
Réal Bouclin believed that he had thus been able to avoid bankruptcy, until the shareholders of FPQ (Luc, Franck and Victoria Resslen) saw it differently and decided to try everything to derail the proposal and try to recover the maximum of the approximately $55 million they had lent him.
A path in doubt
Before the judge, their lawyer questioned in particular the trustee’s decision to take the route of a proposal to shareholders ($10.65 million out of $212 million in debts) rather than that of searching for assets that could find themselves hidden among the fifty or so companies, of all kinds, linked in one way or another to Réal Bouclin.
The Resslen clan also requests that the court declare that at least eight creditors who took part in the vote on the composition proposal were not entitled to it and that it suspend the effects of the latter until a judgment is rendered.
Judge Pinsonnault took the case under advisement and requested that the pending motion for approval of Réal Bouclin’s compositional proposal be postponed to an indefinite date.
