Sears Creditors Suing Edward Lampert for Allegedly Squandering Billions of Dollars Pre-Bankruptcy

Sears is back in court. Just two months after Edward Lampert, former chief executive officer of Sears, bought the remains of Sears Holdings Corp. out of bankruptcy for $5.2 billion, creditors are continuing their beef with the company. On Thursday, the restructuring subcommittee, which represents unsecured creditors of Sears, along with other shareholders and investors, filed a complaint against Lampert, his hedge fund ESL Investments; Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a former director of Sears and ESL executive; Kunal Kamlani, the president of ESL and Seritage Growth Properties, the real estate group that housed some of Sears’ most profitable stores, among others, demanding their money back. The suit alleges Lampert and his crew knew the retailer was doomed and engaged in a “years-long strategy of stripping out Sears’ most valuable assets,” as stated in the filing, “to the great detriment of the company and its creditors.” Altogether they claim Lampert had more than $2 billion worth of assets transferred to himself before Sears’ Oct. 15 bankruptcy. “These transfers were unmistakably intended to hinder, delay and defraud creditors and/or occurred when the company was insolvent and had insufficient capital to continue its operations and to repay its billions of dollars in debt,” the

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