EB-5 Visa Business Owner Told to Pay Ousted Investor $7 Million

The owner of a business that helped immigrants obtain EB-5 visas was ordered Monday to pay $6.9 million to a co-investor he forced out of the lucrative partnership so he could freely loot it.

A Delaware Chancery Court judge said Joseph Manheim abused his control over the investments-for-visas enterprise by unilaterally repurchasing Young Min Ban’s stake for “an arbitrarily low price” to clear the way for his own self-dealing. Manheim devoted corporate proceeds—the “Croesian” carried interest rate of 75% on a fund for immigrant investors—to unrelated real estate ventures and his own “lavish lifestyle,” the judge said.

The ruling was ...