“I didn’t make a lot of mistakes,” Louise Blouin said shortly after her opulent Hamptons property was auctioned off in bankruptcy. “You can’t judge someone because they had a problem once in their life. I’m sure Steve Jobs didn’t have a perfect career. »
Mme Blouin, who grew up in Dorval, rose to the elite of New York and London during the 2000s as an arts baroness. She held a salon and organized sparkling parties where artists, scientists, dignitaries and billionaires rubbed shoulders. But her prestige was extinguished on February 13, the moment she entered a dreary bankruptcy courtroom in Central Islip, 45 miles west of her beach house on Long Island, in New York State.
The blonde, slender debtor was dressed all in black for the hearing – black raincoat cinched at the waist, fitted black pants, black shoes. She arrived on the arm of her third husband, Mathew Kabatoff, but without a lawyer, having informed the judge in December that she could not afford one.
Judge Alan Trust heard hours of testimony on whether to approve the forced sale of La Dune, a seaside villa that Mme Blouin had hoped to sell for as much as $115 million.
The Dune had been for sale for years before an anonymous buyer landed it for 89 million at an auction held by Sotheby’s in Manhattan on January 24. In court last week, Mme Blouin, 65, did everything to prevent the sale at this price.
It is only in the Hamptons, this opulent peninsula on Long Island, that selling a house for 89 million could be seen as a fiasco. A comparable property, nearby, has just been sold for 112 million.
But even worse for Mme Blouin and his associates, that $89 million is millions less than the mortgage on La Dune, says John Isbell, a lawyer who handled the transaction for real estate lender Bay Point Advisors.
The 4-acre property on Gin Lane in Southampton, NY features a sunken tennis court, two swimming pools and two grand mansions totaling 22,000 square feet, 19 bedrooms, 20 bathrooms, 1 home theater and 2 gyms. In recent years, two limited liability companies headed by Mr.me Blouin had placed both houses under the protection of American bankruptcy law.
During the bankruptcy hearing, Mme Blouin, without a lawyer, cross-examined numerous people involved in the La Dune saga, including the brokers who had in the past tried unsuccessfully to sell the property, those from Sotheby’s who were successful and the lenders – who will likely get the most of the money.
According to her, offers of more than 100 million had been made for the property; she had printed emails purporting to prove this claim. The judge seemed unconvinced by these documents and by the handwritten annotations in the margins.
“Do you have a clean copy of this document, Mr.me Blouin? “, asked the judge when a witness said he was unable to decipher his handwriting.
The judge did not show more sympathy when Mme Blouin affirmed, in the middle of questioning a witness, that the sales process was “not transparent”. Then, when she asked, in the middle of the hearing, if she could “say a few words”, he told her to save that for “the final argument”.
“Ah, OK,” replied M.me Blouin, adding that he did not know the order of the pleadings: “I have no experience with that. »
Towards the end of the hearing, Mme Blouin said she wouldn’t object to the transaction, but just wanted to ask questions about the process. The judge ruled that the sale of La Dune had been fair, then approved it, saying: “The market has spoken. »
How Mme Has Blouin moved from the Hamptons to the Central Islip bankruptcy court, her net assets already estimated by the Times of London as being between that of Madonna and that of the Queen of England? For her old friend the painter Ross Bleckner, the answer is simple: “She wanted to make things happen in the arts world. »