Insurance mogul Greg Lindberg, who pled guilty to defrauding policyholders and was convicted of attempting to bribe North Carolina's insurance commissioner, urged a state appeals court to overturn the appointment of a receiver over his worldwide assets, after he was hit with a $524 million arbitration award.

In his reply brief Thursday responding to the creditor of the arbitration award, Universal Life Insurance Co., Lindberg noted that by the time ULICO filed its lawsuit in July 2024 seeking the appointment of a receiver, he'd already contributed roughly $335 million worth of assets toward the award.

The award was also both "preliminary" and "interim," Lindberg argued, saying "this receivership was imposed without fundamental due process," specifically because he said he was not permitted to "present defenses, examine witnesses, or introduce evidence."

A North Carolina federal court appointed a special master over Lindberg's assets earlier this year, he added, saying that "federal preemption alone requires dismissal." Lindberg said he's also argued in ongoing federal arbitration proceedings in Florida that he's fully satisfied his obligations under the $524 million award.

According to court filings, ULICO filed a complaint in the Wake County Superior Court in July 2024 seeking the appointment of a receiver of Lindberg's alleged assets in the state, after ULICO said it learned Lindberg was dissipating assets to avoid paying creditors, including the insurer.

ULICO has sought to collect on a more than $524 million arbitration award it won in June 2020 against PB Life and Annuity Co. Ltd., a company wholly owned by Lindberg, after ULICO accused Lindberg of misappropriating funds allocated to a trust as part of a reinsurance agreement with PBLA. The Fourth Circuit upheld the award last August, days after the state court filed a written order appointing a receiver over Lindberg's assets, following its ruling from the bench on Aug. 9, 2024.

"Lindberg has been hiding and secreting his assets to evade (Universal Life's) judgment and his other creditors," Judge A. Graham Shirley's order stated, adding that the at-issue arbitration award has grown to $584 million, including interest.

Lindberg has lodged two appeals over the decision — one challenging the state's court's jurisdiction, which ULICO has called "baseless" — and another on the merits concerning the receivership itself.

Thursday's brief is a reply to ULICO's own appellee brief in the receivership appeal, filed in August, after it filed a motion to dismiss his appeal in May as a sanction for allegedly violating court deadlines, specifically over serving ULICO's counsel a proposed record on appeal.

In its August opening appellee brief, ULICO argued that Lindberg is "effectively asking this court to sanction an appellate strategy tailor-made to delay proceedings below," calling his separate jurisdictional appeal "frivolous."

Lindberg qualifies as an "individual business debtor" under state receivership statute Section 1-507.24(e), ULICO argued. It said it further provided "uncontested evidence of Lindberg's inability and/or unwillingness to pay debts as they come due and imminent insolvency at the time of the receivership order, namely, a federal tax lien of over $27 million … and a Durham County tax foreclosure action."

As for Lindberg, he argued Thursday that the hearing from which the trial judge first handed down the receivership order was "noticed solely for jurisdictional matters," and "not the merits." After first awarding ULICO the $524 million, the underlying arbitration panel further directed the parties to propose schedules for a "'full hearing on the merits,'" Lindberg said, quoting the panel.

"Yet ULICO now seeks to transform this preliminary arbitration determination into an unassailable final judgment against a guarantor who has never had a chance to defend himself in court," Lindberg continued. "This violates the Federal Arbitration Act, which does not permit preliminary awards to be weaponized without full adjudication."

The arbitration award dispute comes after a jury found Lindberg guilty in North Carolina federal court in May 2024 of trying to bribe the state's insurance commissioner by making campaign contributions in exchange for weaker oversight. Lindberg then pled guilty in November to certain criminal charges for lying to state insurance regulators and defrauding policyholders.

Representatives of the parties did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Lindberg is represented by Michael G. Newell of Global Growth Holdings LLC, a successor entity to Lindberg's company Eli Global LLC

ULICO is represented by Christopher G. Browning Jr., Michael B. Cohen and R. Kyle Driggers of Troutman Pepper Locke LLP.

The case is Universal Life Insurance Co. v. Lindberg, case number 25-387, in the North Carolina Court of Appeals.