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Declan Ganley’s US legal battles shine a bright light into previously hidden corners of his finances

Court documents lift the lid on a surprising lack of revenue at Ganley’s company Rivada Networks in a fight with investor David Shuman that shows no let-up

Declan Ganley has said he does not own the 21-room mansion in Galway where he lives, which is instead owned by his wife. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons

Barry J Whyte
Fri Feb 16 2024 - 05:45

Declan Ganley is on the verge of what could be the most transformative deal of his career.

His company Rivada Networks is in the midst of raising funds to build a multibillion dollar array of 600 satellites which, once launched, will sit in a low-earth orbit and deliver a kind of private, unhackable internet, which he has termed the OuterNet.

It would arguably turn Ganley into one of Ireland’s most successful entrepreneurs, give him control of a critical piece of global communications infrastructure and make him a lot of money.

The potential for Rivada is enormous. Indeed, just recently Ganley – under oath – put a value of $12 billion (€11.2 billion) on the company, as it raises the billions of dollars necessary to build the project.

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The problem is, he made that statement in a deposition as part of a long-running dispute with one of Rivada’s shareholders, David Shuman, a New York-based private equity investor. The dispute centres on a default debt judgment that is estimated now to be nearly $20 million with interest.

The litigation has yanked back the curtain on Rivada at an acutely sensitive time, exposing an unflattering portrait of how the company has been performing in the years leading up to this enormous space satellite deal.

It’s a fight that shows no signs of resolving itself any time soon.

Based on the voluminous court filings, Ganley and Shuman first came to know each other in the second half of 2016. They must have hit it off reasonably well in those early months, because before the end of the year Shuman had not only invested in Rivada but also made a convertible loan to the company of about $2.5 million.

[ New York court threatens to arrest Declan Ganley over failure to satisfy judgment ]

About a year later, he also agreed to serve as guarantor on a loan Ganley had taken with a New York investment firm, Worth Capital. However, the course of neither loan ran smoothly. First Ganley defaulted on his loan from Worth, by which time the debt had reached a sum of $7.5 million, according to a confession of judgment document he signed in 2018. Then, separately, Rivada also defaulted on the convertible loan extended by Shuman.

When that happened, Shuman pursued the convertible loan to Rivada, firstly through arbitration and then by having the debt registered with a court in New York.

The Worth loan turned out to be more contentious, and in order to resolve it two new investors were brought in to Rivada to raise the funds to settle the dispute with Worth, after which Shuman, as guarantor, got a tranche of about 150,000 Rivada shares that Ganley had pledged as collateral for the loan, as well as control of the debt.

Therein lies the essence of the current dispute, the facts of which are detailed, complex, and heavily disputed. Ganley claims Shuman had no right to the shares or the debt, while Shuman insists that he did.

In 2021 Shuman secured a default judgment against Ganley in New York in the amount of $16.2 million. Ganley has made a number of petitions to have the default judgment vacated, but to date a succession of judges have upheld it.

The US litigation has shone an increasingly bright light into corners of Ganley’s business empire that had previously never been seen.

[ Rivada will not be ‘revenue positive’ for a few years, says Declan Ganley ]

Take, for example, the seemingly simple question of how much Rivada earns in a given year. Rivada is a private company registered in the US, so for years it had been nigh-on impossible to get a view into its finances, with only occasional glimpses of the contracts it was winning from various arms of the US military and security forces.

The Shuman litigation has revealed that Rivada’s revenues have been far lower than anyone expected – virtually nil at times, according to the evidence contained in a deposition of the company’s chief financial officer, Douglas Lynn.

Lynn gave the deposition in February 2023, and under grilling from Shuman’s lawyers he told them that the company hadn’t had any revenue for years, he said, going back as far as 2015.

Staff hadn’t been paid in months, including Lynn himself, and its total payroll liabilities were about $2.2 million, which he said “related to 2019 when we didn’t have cash and couldn’t pay”.

Adding payroll to its other liabilities, the company had total liabilities of “around $45 million”, with assets of just $3 million, it was revealed.

It was just about managing to pay its payroll taxes, its health insurance for staff, and the rent on an apartment in Washington DC for Ganley and other Rivada executives to stay in, Lynn set out in the deposition.

Shuman began to chase down Ganley’s assets, relentlessly, one by one. There were surprisingly few, by Ganley’s own account in an information subpoena he filled out in March 2022

Shuman’s lawyers used the deposition that Rivada was in fact insolvent, and ought to be placed into receivership. The judge didn’t agree with that portion of Shuman’s argument, but did consent to issuing a turnover order – literally an order to turn over certain assets – which included Rivada’s most exciting subsidiary, Rivada Space Networks, the entity through which it was pursuing the billion-dollar OuterNet.

Soon after that order was issued, Rivada found the $3.3 million necessary to settle its debt to Shuman, which effectively closed off one leg of the litigation.

But there was still the matter of the larger portion of debt – the former Worth Capital loan, now turned into a default judgment, which, including interest, was now up to an estimated $20 million.

In order to satisfy that judgment, Shuman began to chase down Ganley’s assets, relentlessly, one by one. There were surprisingly few, by Ganley’s own account in an information subpoena he filled out in March 2022.

For example, he said he does not own the 21-room mansion in Galway in which he lives, which is instead owned by his wife, Delia. At the time of the subpoena, he owned just 20,000 shares in Rivada. He had a small amount of property, consisting of four acres of farmland bought for €47,000, and a pub near his house that he bought for €210,000.

He planned to reopen the bar as the Edmund Burke pub, as an homage to his favourite philosopher. He listed a salary from Rivada of just over €6,000 a week – roughly €3,200 after tax – as well as a number of Mercedes Benz cars, and two Massey Ferguson tractors.

[ Declan Ganley to sell Massey Ferguson tractor and pub as part of $20m US debt dispute ]

Nonetheless, Shuman began to pursue whatever he could find. He identified two companies, a British-registered entity called Ganley International Ltd, and a Swiss asset management company called St Columbanus AG, which he has asked the court to turnover. The two sides and their legal teams are still in dispute over the precise value of the companies, which Shuman’s side says was “nominal, at best”.

Ganley was also forced to surrender his remaining 20,000 shares in Rivada, which were auctioned off in October and raised $400,000 to reduce the debt, meaning he no longer has any shares in the company.

It should be noted that through it all Ganley has insisted he should not be on the hook for the judgment. In a filing in October his lawyers argued that Shuman “[came] into possession of the Rivada stock because he duped [Ganley] into believing that they were on the same side”, that he is trying to keep the shares “by trickery and deceit”, and that he is “attempting to double – or triple – recover” what he is owed. Shuman denies this.

Having already transferred control of companies, shares and other assets, Ganley has repeatedly argued that he does not owe anything more to Shuman.

He looks set to make that argument again, according to his lawyer Jeremy Bressman, who told a judge in New York this month that his client would soon be issuing a motion containing “strong [and] competent evidence” that the judgment has already been fulfilled.

Libertas chairman Declan Ganley campaigning against the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. Photograph: Frank Miller

In the meantime, Shuman has continued to pursue the judgment, and in a filing this week his lawyers made an application to the supreme court in New York asking them to effectively garnish Ganley’s wages from Rivada by imposing a kind of plan to pay back the debt by instalments.

The lawyers argued that Ganley’s “disclosed salary of $360,000 is artificially low” for a company worth $12 billion, with a board stacked with heavyweights, and chasing billions in funding for a satellite network.

It noted that on top of that low salary, Rivada pays Ganley’s credit card balance, including both personal and business expenses, running to about $600,000 since 2019. The company is also paying his legal expenses, which Shuman’s lawyers note “must be considerable”.

And since he doesn’t own the house in Moyne Park, the lawyers argued, “in effect, [Ganley] has no requirements on his income whatsoever, since all his room and board is provided for by his spouse, and all of his travel and legal expenses are paid for by Rivada”.

This was, they argued, “all a part of [Ganley’s] long-standing and pervasive pattern of making every effort to avoid paying the lawful judgment that this court entered against him”, with Ganley “attempting to impede [Shuman] by rendering services without adequate compensation”.

Rivada was contacted for comment on the litigation. And Ganley’s lawyers have yet to respond – and he did not reply to a request for comment before publication – but the fight looks set to go on for some time.

Declan GanleyRivada NetworksNew York City