The co-developer of a $300 million resort in Keystone says $8 million went missing from the project and the firm was then pushed out for revealing the other developer’s bank fraud.

That developer accused of fraud says the other developer is a liar, sham and grifter who committed a federal crime while running a scam that cost the project $72 million.

The Kindred Resort, which broke ground earlier this year and is expected to open in 2025, will be a ski-in, ski-out hotel and condo complex on four acres. Its 95 condos range in price from $1 to $6 million, according to Summit Daily.

But beyond the boastful press releases and smiley groundbreakings, there are lawsuits sitting at courthouses in New York City and Breckenridge that reveal deep and lasting animosity between the two firms picked by Vail Resorts to co-develop the project. The result could be costly litigation, with each side demanding the other pay tens of millions of dollars.

This much is agreed upon: In the fall of 2020, Vail Resorts introduced the Aspen-based development group One River Run Acquisition, or ORRA, to a national real estate investment firm called Greenwich Group International, or GGI, and tasked them with creating Kindred. The 50-50 partnership was to combine ORRA’s development skills with GGI’s fundraising.

Within two weeks, GGI found things were amiss, it claims. The land that Kindred would be built atop was quietly transferred to newly created LLCs operated by ORRA’s owners and their family members, GGI alleged in a lawsuit filed Oct. 18 in Summit County District Court.

GGI had been convinced to partner with ORRA after learning the latter invested $15.8 million of its own money into the project — evidence of its strong commitment. But GGI now says that ORRA “fraudulently misrepresented” its investment in Kindred.

In February 2021, ORRA and GGI asked that FirstBank increase a $6 million loan to $8.5 million. FirstBank agreed to but, as part of its standard due diligence, asked for proof that ORRA was investing $15.8 million. According to GGI, that’s when the bank noticed ORRA’s actual investment was about $7.8 million, not $15.8 million.

“$8 million was missing from the project,” GGI’s lawsuit states.

Read the full story at BusinessDen.com.

Editor’s note: In response to a media request by Summit Daily News, One River Run Acquisition, LLC, sent the following statement through its lawyer: “We discussed potentially collaborating with Greenwich Group International on and off through 2020. However, over the course of 9 months, the terms of any such collaboration were impossible based on a flawed financial model proposed by GGI. After several unsuccessful attempts to collaborate on the potential opportunity, it became clear that we needed a different financial collaborator to successfully bring our vision for Kindred Resort to reality. We have every confidence that once the facts of this matter are brought to light, it will quickly be put behind us. In the meantime, we remain fully focused on completing the construction of Kindred Resort.”