Rudy Giuliani owes $300,000 to firm that worked on his bankruptcy case, judge says

By Katelyn Polantz, CNN

(CNN) — Former New York City Mayor and Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has been told he must pay a bill of about $300,000 for a forensic accounting firm’s work to trace his money in his now-aborted bankruptcy proceeding.

The dispute over how much Giuliani owes to the accounting firm Global Data Risk was the last vestige of his efforts earlier this year to hold off creditors, to whom he is nearly $150 million in debt.

Giuliani had argued to the judge, Sean Lane of the US Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York, that the fees of the accounting firm such as billing for meetings, travel and interview time as they researched his assets for the creditors should be reduced.

But Lane is giving the accounting firm nearly all it sought.

“There was an alarming and inappropriate lack of financial transparency by the debtor … which led to the need for this work,” Lane said at a court hearing on Tuesday.

Giuliani dropped his bankruptcy case over the summer as the federal judge grew impatient with his lack of financial transparency. The bankruptcy had temporarily blocked the Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss from seizing his condos, freezing his bank accounts and trying to grab anything of value he owns, such as New York Yankees collectibles and luxury watches.

Freeman and Moss are currently in court trying to force the sale of Guiliani’s property, including a penthouse co-op apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan and a Florida condo that are worth millions.

Freeman and Moss are theoretically the first in line among the list of people whom Giuliani owes, because a jury awarded the mother and daughter nearly $150 million because Giuliani defamed them after the 2020 election.

Global Data Risk has also been in court trying to collect quickly because the company was brought in to investigate Giuliani’s wealth on behalf of his creditors. Much of the company’s work never became public because Giuliani ended his bankruptcy prematurely.

Giuliani has already put $100,000 in escrow to pay for some of Global Data Risk’s bill. The rest is likely to be taken out of what Freeman and Moss get as they sell his assets, according to the court record.

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