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 part one of 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.