MIAMI — The head of The Dolphin Company, the Mexican parent company of the troubled Miami Seaquarium, stridently denied media reports in the country that it is filing for bankruptcy — but did say it is beginning “a process to restructure its financial liabilities.”
In all-caps, a company news release issued Wednesday stated that the process is “NOT A BANKRUPTCY FILING.”
It is instead, CEO Eduardo Albor claims, “a mechanism provided by Mexican laws to facilitate an agreement with the main creditors, protecting the interests of other suppliers, employees, and customers, as well as the company’s assets for its benefit.”
But it’s a clear sign of financial distress. A Mexican media outlet reported that the company has more than $200 million in financial liabilities, citing its “decline” in no small part as connected to the problems at the Miami Seaquarium, its marine park on Virginia Key.
The Seaquarium faces an impending eviction from Miami-Dade County as it faces allegations of poor conditions at the park.
“We are currently reviewing their obligations under the lease,” a spokesperson for Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told Local 10 News on Wednesday.
Local 10 News has filed past stories about small business owners who said the Seaquarium wasn’t paying them the money they were owed.
Daniel Wehking, a one-time Seaquarium animal caretaker-turned-attorney who became a critic of the park, told Local 10 News that the park lost its final accreditation — Alliance for Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums — on Feb. 12, one of the conditions of its lease with the county. He said the AMMPA Board of Directors voted unanimously to terminate it.
Court hearings in the eviction case, he said, are scheduled for March and April.
On a “members-only” portion of its website — which appears to have been unintentionally made accessible to the public and was viewed by Local 10 News on Friday — the AMMPA notified its other members of the Seaquarium’s loss of accreditation and outlined its reasoning.
It also says the organization had no intention of informing the public about its finding that the Seaquarium had “material violations of AMMPA’s Standards and Guidelines.” The memo does not elaborate on what those violations were.
Local 10 News has contacted spokespeople for The Dolphin Company and the county seeking comment on these two developments.
“Miami-Dade County’s lease agreement for the management of the Miami Seaquarium is with MS Leisure Corporation,” a county spokesperson said in response. “The County will continue to monitor this situation for any potential impacts on MS Leisure’s ability to fulfill its obligations under the current lease.”
Meanwhile, in Friday’s statement, Albor struck a sanguine tone about the company’s future.
“The Dolphin Company, 30 years after embarking on this adventure with the first Dolphin Discovery habitat in Mexico, continues and will continue to welcome new guests to all its parks, habitats, and business centers in Mexico, the United States, Italy, and the Caribbean, with the same commitment and dedication with which it has welcomed more than 21 million guests over the years,” he said.
He continued, “At this moment, our goal is to reaffirm the foundations of this great company and prepare it for what will be its best years. Because the best is yet to come.”
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