INDIAN LAND, S.C. — Mick Mulvaney was a young businessman and budding politician 11 years ago when he became co-owner of a company that wanted to build a strip mall near a busy intersection in this upscale bedroom community outside Charlotte.
All that was needed was money.
The company cobbled together the financing — which included borrowing $1.4 million from a family firm owned by a prominent local businessman named Charles Fonville Sr., according to court records and interviews.
Eventually, the project fell apart. The mall never got built. And Mulvaney moved on, building a political career as a firebrand fiscal hawk and tea party pioneer in Congress who railed against out-of-control government deficits — eventually rising a few weeks ago to be President Trump’s acting chief of staff.
Fonville, however, said his company has not received the $2.5 million with interest that he said it is owed. In explaining the debt to a Senate committee during his 2017 confirmation hearing,
Mulvaney cast it as a casualty of a bad real estate deal, saying the sum “will go unpaid.”
Fonville’s company has filed a claim in a South Carolina court against two companies in which Mulvaney has an ownership stake, accusing them of *“intent to deceive,” “fraudulent acts” and “breach of contract” to avoid repayment. The heart of Fonville’s allegation: When a new Mulvaney-linked company was formed and sought to foreclose on the first company Mulvaney co-owned,
it was a maneuver to avoid paying the debt owed to Fonville.
In court filings, the Mulvaney-connected companies denied the allegations and asked that Fonville & Co.’s claim be dismissed. But a judge said the case should go forward. No trial date has been set.