By Will Collette
Phil Armetta - Copar's money guy. Photo courtesy
of Stephen Devoto, Middletown (CT) Eye News.
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Espinoza
quotes interim Westerly Town Manager Amy Grzybowski as saying that “earlier this week, the property owners [the
politically connected Comolli family] sought to place Armetta in receivership
in state court, and a temporary receiver was appointed….“We also recently
learned that Armetta filed a chapter 11 petition in U.S. bankruptcy in
Connecticut.”
This
announcement is not especially surprising.
When
I first started reporting on the Copar Quarry, I noted the troubling records of
its principals, including federal
and state convictions for fraud (click
here, also), as well as failed businesses.
In July
2013, I revealed the extraordinary amount of litigation filed
against Copar and its principals.
My conclusion that Copar was always something other than a regular business were confirmed when the top
players in Copar started to turn on each other and began filing
lawsuits and criminal complaints against each other.
As
expected, it was the money that has brought Copar/Armetta down, not the
unsuccessful civil lawsuits or bumbling attempts by the Westerly
and Charlestown
town governments. Not even the intervention of underachiever
state Rep. Flip Filippi (I/R-from somewhere other than District 36)
brought this about.
Not
known at this point is the status of Copar/Armetta’s operation of the Morrone
sand and gravel pit in Charlestown or its work at the proposed site of Richmond Commons.
There are also Copar/Armetta operations in Connecticut that may be
affected by this financial collapse.
The status of payment of the numerous
fines Copar/Armetta has accumulated is also unknown.
We
also don’t know what will happen at the property – i.e. will another operator
take it over? Or whether that property will be reclaimed, an important question
since the quarry just recently
claimed the life of a neighbor who fell off a high wall.
Finally,
we don’t know what lessons, if any, the town governments of Charlestown and
Westerly will take from this sorry story about dealing with bad actors,
regulating mining and dealing with the kind of corruption
the Copar adventure revealed in Westerly.