The billionaire businessman at the centre of a failed Bermuda investment company faces up to 30 years in prison for offences in North Carolina.

The founder and chairman of a multinational investment company, and, another company executive, face being jailed a second time after a retrial for orchestrating a bribery scheme involving independent expenditure accounts and improper campaign contributions.

A sentencing date has not yet been set.

A federal jury in Charlotte convicted Greg E. Lindberg, 54, from Durham, the founder and chairman of Eli Global LLC and the owner of Global Bankers Insurance Group.

He and another man were found guilty by the jury of conspiring to commit wire fraud and bribery related to programmes that receive government funding for honest services.

Mr Lindberg is known locally because his GBIG acquired Northstar Financial Services (Bermuda) around the time he was first on trial for the US offences.

Northstar, which became a segregated accounts company, is now in liquidation proceedings after filing for bankruptcy in the Supreme Court.

It was marketed to international investors as being safe because of the segregation of accounts. But somehow, investor assets went missing.

The court appointed Rachelle Frisby and John Johnston of Deloitte Ltd in October 2020 as the company’s joint provisional liquidators.

Initially founded in the 1990s, Northstar offered fixed and variable-rate annuity and investment products.

But when Investors wanted their money and the company was unable to pay, it was estimated to have had a deficit of more than $260 million.

By September 2020 they were reporting only $8 million in assets and filed for bankruptcy protection.

The Bermuda Monetary Authority filed a winding-up petition in the Bermuda Supreme Court against Northstar, a related company Omnia Ltd, together with a third company, PB Life and Annuity Co Ltd.

A joint provisional liquidators’ report counted more than 1,000 fixed-account holders with potential claims that had a value of $305,576,351 and several hundred variable account holders with potential claims with a value of $121,249,243.

Mr Lindberg was initially jailed in October 2020 for the North Carolina offences for more than seven years at a minimum-security facility, The Federal Prison Camp, Montgomery, after the first trial.

But the convictions were overturned by a federal appeals court that set him free in July 2022.

Prosecutors said Mr Lindberg and his consultant promised millions of dollars in campaign contributions in exchange for beneficial government decisions – seeking to buy changes to North Carolina Department of Insurance personnel, policies, and procedures to benefit his businesses.

The elected North Carolina insurance commissioner reported concerns to the FBI and agreed to co-operate with the federal investigation that was initiated.

The US Department of Justice concluded the pair “gave, offered, and promised the commissioner millions of dollars in campaign contributions and other things of value, in exchange for the removal of the state’s senior deputy commissioner, who was responsible for overseeing regulation and the periodic examination of GBIG”.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial from April 2017 to August 2018, the two men engaged in a bribery scheme for the purpose of causing the state’s Commissioner of Insurance to take official action favourable to Lindberg’s company, GBIG.