photo credit: California Fish & Game Commission
Former Press Democrat co-owner Darius Anderson.

Darius Anderson is a prominent Sonoma County businessman and political lobbyist, known for his role at the helm of the Sonoma Media Investments, former owners of the Press Democrat.

Anderson is now being sued by the man who mentored him in the world of business, Ron Burkle.

KRCB News spoke with the Press Democrat's investigative reporter Phil Barber about the case.

Below is the conversation between Barber and KRCB's Noah Abrams.

Noah Abrams: Who is Darius Anderson for folks who don't know him?

How did he make his money and how did he come to be at one time, the kind of controlling member of the ownership group of the Press Democrat?

Phil Barber: Darius Anderson, he has his fingers in a lot of a lot of pots, but primarily he is known for his lobbying firm, Platinum Advisors, which is based in Sacramento, but also has offices in DC, and it turns out San Francisco.

He's been a big player in Democratic [Party] politics and in lobbying efforts. He's pretty well known in that sphere.

A bit later, Anderson started Kenwood Investments, which has an office in Sonoma. Then in, I want to say 2012, Anderson headed a group that put together a purchase of the Press Democrat and its sibling newspapers, which at that time was owned by a Florida company called Halifax Media.

There were a number of people involved, but Darius Anderson was always the face of that. That ownership ended last year when Darius Anderson had been in negotiations with the Hearst Corporation for purchase of the holdings of Sonoma Media Investments, as it was called. But then at the last minute, MediaNews Group came in with a higher bid supposedly and bought the newspaper.

NA: What's going on with a lawsuit that he is involved in? Filed in Los Angeles, is that correct?

PB: That is correct. In February, a man named Ron Burkle sued Darius Anderson on a number of counts that more or less all had to do with fraud and failure to provide documentation.

Ron Burkle might not be as well known in the North Bay, but Ron Burkle is a vastly wealthy person. Most of his money seems to have been gained through leveraged buyouts of supermarket and grocery chains.

He describes himself as Darius Anderson's first real employer, and the two men have been very close over their lives. Over the years, but mostly in the early stages of Darius Anderson's blossoming career, Burkle bought into two of Anderson's companies.

Apparently, he owns a 20% stake in Platinum Advisors, which is Anderson's signature lobbying firm and 10% interest in Kenwood Investments, which is centered more around real estate. So, last year as the lawsuit states, Anderson was attempting to sell Platinum Advisors.

He was talking to a group, or a company that isn't named in the suit, but that is backed by venture capital, and at that point, he was trying to buy out Burkle's 20% interest. Burkle says that he asked for numbers, he asked for documentation and you know basically like profit and loss.

[Burkle] claims that Anderson was cagey and wouldn't provide the numbers and when Burkle finally got them, not through Anderson but through a third party, he discovered that Darius Anderson had pulled a lot of money out of both Platinum Advisors and [Kenwood] investments, basically as salary or as, you know, annual payments to Anderson that came off the top before any dividends would have gone to partners.

Burkle says basically he was paid nothing over a period of years when Anderson wound up paying himself, Burkle says over $20 million.

So that's basically [the] central point of the lawsuit, and I should state just for clarity that the lawsuit was filed not by Burkle as an individual, but by his company OA3.

NA: Who is Mr. Burkle? What's his background? And it looks like in your reporting here, there's some pretty unsavory or salacious connections to well-known and disgraced individuals in American media and high places.

PB: Yeah, so I knew a lot less about Ron Burkle before this lawsuit was filed and maybe his name rang a bell, but I would say I knew almost nothing about him.

Burkle is a little older than Anderson, which makes sense because of his mentor's role. He was born in Pomona and he he worked in grocery stores, I think, as a teenager and got into that business and did very well in it. Forbes estimates his net worth at I think just under 4 billion dollars.

He's gotten into things far beyond supermarkets. He's done a lot of investment in tech companies more recently and he's done very well. The associations that you alluded to were drawn out in a separate complaint filed by Darius Anderson, who is basically seeking to dissolve the Platinum Advisors partnership which would you know basically cut out Burkle from any decision making in a sale.

The phrasing was very vague in Darius Anderson's complaint and in a statement sent to me by Anderson's attorney, and it referred to sort of unsavory connections that Anderson wanted to distance himself from. Those clearly refer to Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, two of the most infamous public figures, I would say, of the last 10-20 years.

Burkle clearly has had a long association with Harvey Weinstein, they have produced movies together and they've been described as close. Close business relations certainly, and perhaps friendly, that I don't know. Burkle's association with Epstein seems more tangential but, you know, he does come up in the Epstein files.

I will say that his name is misspelled with a 'CK' rather than just a 'K' in a lot of the Epstein stuff, which would make me dubious about even drawing the connection except there's an address listed in Epstein's black book for Ron Burkle that matches the address that he still uses for his business. So I do think it's the same Ron Burkle.

Now, Burkle has said, or a spokesman for Burkle has said, in the past that that there was no strong bond between Epstein and Burkle. In fact, when Burkle flew to Africa on Epstein's private jet with Bill Clinton, which is a heck of a sentence to say; when Berke came back afterwards, he apparently described Epstein as creepy and didn't make it sound like there was a close friendship there.

But those associations, I think Darius Anderson and his team are certainly trying to exploit right now or emphasize.

NA: Wow, a lot to chew on there...I'll keep it simple and and finish on this. What's coming next with the lawsuit, at least as far as you can tell and and where does it seems like things are headed?

PB: It will be interesting because as you can imagine, this is a billionaire versus a multi-millionaire and they have hired high-powered lawyers. So I don't know what that means, but it certainly could mean that it could be a drawn out process with a lot of resources on both sides.

I don't know too much about what it will look like in the immediate future. I know that they do have a round of mediation scheduled. That's practically mandated by the courts. This sounds like a pretty bitter dispute at this point with the two men, you know, basically attacking one another's reputation; so I wouldn't anticipate a quick mediated settlement, but you never know.

These are experienced business people who probably do know how to present a good case but then reach a deal when it makes sense. So, we'll have to see, but the Press Democrat will certainly be following it.

Not just because of Mr. Anderson's association with the paper, of course, but he is a prominent figure locally. So, we'll try to stay on it and look forward to finding out more. 

Anderson and his legal team, led by Navi Singh Dhillon have also counter-sued Burkle's OA3 group, represented by Patty Glaser, in Los Angeles Superior Court.