Not-At-All-Busy Apollo Global Gets To Try To Explain How It Didn’t Screw Phil Falcone Over In 2010

There’s a lot Apollo Global Management would like to put in the past. Co-founder Leon Black’s not-particularly limited relationship with convicted pedophile Jeff Epstein, first and foremost, of course. But it would also very much like to not ever again have to hear about an 11-year-old deal it struck with another (albeit much, much less) disgraced financier (assuming you could call Epstein that) and owner of an Upper East Side townhouse with a grody past. Unfortunately, the U.S. bankruptcy code will not allow for that, either.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman in Manhattan issued her ruling at the conclusion of a remote hearing on Monday, finding that because Apollo was not a player in the company’s reorganization, it was not entitled to protection afforded by the reorganization plan she confirmed in 2015.

At issue, according to Harbinger Capital Partners, is the allegedly inconvenient fact that Apollo allegedly knew all about the future LightSquared’s spectrum proximity problems vis-à-vis global positioning systems way back in 2001, nine years before it unloaded the company onto Harbinger and sent founder Phil Falcone onto a $2 billion, career-destroying crusade to build the wireless network of the future, but allegedly failed to mention it. Given that we’re talking about bankruptcy court here, you can guess how well that went.

Anyway, Falcone now has a chance to get that $2 billion back, plus punitive damages. And boy oh boy could he use it.

Apollo can’t use bankruptcy court to block litigation over LightSquared investments [Reuters]