CCG Capital Founder Avoids Contempt, Plays Ball

After months of radio silence, CCG Capital founder Robert Buchanan is playing ball.

Buchanan appeared in an Austin courtroom Thursday afternoon after missing the receivership’s first hearing. He wore a gray suit jacket and salt-and-pepper beard, and was joined by his legal counsel, hired in recent weeks, who sat to his left in the front row.

CCG Capital collapsed last year in what former investors and an outside analyst now allege was a Ponzi scheme. The investor’s high-yield fund has entered receivership, and investors have organized to attend court meetings and fight for their money — or at least what’s left of it.

Trip Nix, the receiver’s counsel, told the court Buchanan had been cooperating and delivered almost all requested documentation from the company. As a result, he asked the court not to hold Buchanan in contempt at this hearing.

Nix then delivered highlights from the receiver’s second status report, which detailed the fund’s assets and how it might recover money from the portfolio. The fund holds several notes receivable from loans that went unpaid, as well as some real estate it seized from delinquent borrowers.

One project it lent to, a single-family home development at 3405 Congress Avenue in Austin, is “close to completion,” but the developer says it needs about $40,000 in advance to get to a point where it can start selling. The receiver is likely to make this advance, Nix said. Work at another of the developer’s projects, 3605 Constitution Drive, is much farther off.

Another key loan in the fund’s portfolio is one that was extended to CCG Development, the company’s development arm. The loan was secured by Buchanan’s personal residence.

The property was posted for foreclosure auction in July, but the receiver and Buchanan negotiated a deed-in-lieu, so the fund now owns the house. Buchanan needs to vacate the property by Sept. 2, Nix said, but that’s not all he’s leaving behind at the house.

There are still two tax liens on the property for about $123,000 from Travis County that the fund will have to settle. There’s also a federal tax lien from the IRS for $452,000, but that lien is junior to the others and can be wiped out.

As for land, the fund holds the first lien on 50 acres around a golf course in northwest San Antonio. It plans to sell the land at foreclosure auction.