Austin developer Nate Paul was ordered to serve 10 days in jail. Here’s why.

Austin developer Nate Paul was ordered to serve 10 days in jail. Here’s why.

Embattled Austin real estate developer Nate Paul was ordered Friday to report to the Travis County Jail later this week to serve a 10-day criminal contempt-of-court sentence.

State District Judge Jan Soifer instructed Paul to begin serving the sentence Nov. 15 related to the contempt finding she first handed him last year, saying he “continuously refused” to comply with a court order in a civil case in which he is accused of defrauding a nonprofit.

The sentence had been delayed as Paul sought an appeal of Soifer’s order. U.S. District Judge David Allan Ezra on Thursday cleared the way for Soifer to order Paul to jail.

The civil case is separate from federal charges against Paul, who was once featured in Forbes magazine for building a real estate investment firm that had amassed a $1 billion portfolio in 17 states of office buildings, retail centers, apartments and student housing. Some of his big initiatives include founding Great Value Storage, a large player in self-storage facilities, and buying the KPMG Tower in downtown Dallas.

More: Why Nate Paul was back in court, and what his lawyers are saying about evidence in the case

Paul’s trial in connection with an  eight-count indictment on federal financial crimes handed up in June 2023 and a follow-up four-count indictment announced in November is scheduled to begin early next year.

In a court hearing late last month, a federal investigator testified that one of Paul’s former employees had told him that he witnessed Paul alter bank documents in an effort to obtain a real estate loan.

The disclosure came during a hearing in which Paul’s attorneys argued that the federal investigatory process used to build the case against the developer was flawed and should be inadmissible at trial.

Paul was also part of the backstory to last year’s impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, for whom the state House overwhelmingly approved 20 charges in which they accused the state’s top attorney of improperly accepting gifts and other favors from the developer. Paxton was later acquitted of the allegations by the Texas Senate in a vote that was mostly along party lines.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin real estate developer Nate Paul ordered to jail. Here’s why.

EMEA Tribune is not involved in this news article, it is taken from our partners and or from the News Agencies. Copyright and Credit go to the News Agencies, email news@emeatribune.com Follow our WhatsApp verified Channel210520-twitter-verified-cs-70cdee.jpg (1500×750)

Support Independent Journalism with a donation (Paypal, BTC, USDT, ETH)
WhatsApp channel DJ Kamal Mustafa