Charlie Leonard deals with a lot of trash at work. But the Rolloffs Hawaii CEO feels like his reputation recently got trashed unfairly by a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge.

“I got thrown under the bus,” he said in an interview Friday in his Sand Island office.

Leonard was responding to an order issued by Judge Robert Faris two weeks ago that said there was a “strong appearance” that Leonard and two other top Rolloffs managers put their financial interests above those of unsecured creditors, including the city.

“This raises serious questions and must not be swept under the carpet,” the judge said in his order that appointed a trustee to verify certain expenditures of Rolloffs while it is in bankruptcy pending a sale to another local refuse company, West Oahu Aggregate. “Rolloffs’ insistence on protecting the interests of the key employees and its complete neglect of the interests of unsecured creditors is cause for the appointment of a trustee.”

Leonard contends that American Savings Bank, as the biggest creditor of Rolloffs, controlled how much money would be repaid to other creditors, and that his management team saved Rolloffs from being liquidated for $1 million. The company was eventually sold for $5 million at a Bankruptcy Court auction, a sale that Leonard says was possible because his team kept the company alive.

The $4 million difference, he said, benefited all creditors because more money could be shared among them.

“Instead of getting credit for saving this damn business, and looking out for the employees and looking out for the unsecured creditors, we get thrown under the bus,” he said. “It’s not fair. It’s not accurate. And the judge’s comments quite honestly were irresponsible and inaccurate.”

Leonard was hired as president in 2009 when California-based private equity firm Corridor Capital LLC acquired Rolloffs. Leonard said he led the company as it more than doubled its annual revenue from $13 million to $28 million and that operating profit grew sixfold from roughly $500,000 to around $3 million.

In 2012, Leonard left Rolloffs and said the company was in excellent shape. Then Corridor, which was trying to sell Rolloffs, asked the former executive to return last year, according to Leonard.

Leonard said Corridor, in its attempt to profit from a sale, had tried to boost income by cutting expenses, and that this led to service declines and customer losses. He said when he agreed to return he knew the company’s finances were slipping but not the extent of the slide.

In agreeing to return, Leonard said he signed a contract with Corridor that would pay him a $440,000 bonus if the ongoing sale effort was successful. Yet when he arrived for work in July he said he was shocked to see that there was a $143,000 operating loss in June and that Rolloffs had lost $7 million in annualized revenue in a five-month span.

“Then it was, ‘Oh my God,’” Leonard said. “We grabbed this thing when it was literally on death’s door. People were leaving this facility. Drivers were quitting. Employees were walking out the door. And they only stayed because of my past history and reputation.”

Leonard said he gradually reduced the size of monthly losses to where an operating profit of $10,000 was eked out in November. But the toll had been too great, and bills could not be paid. Rolloffs filed for bankruptcy reorganization Dec. 9.

The Rolloffs CEO said Corridor walked away. He added that he didn’t want to walk away but also didn’t want to continue his effort without part of the bonus arrangement he had with Corridor. So he sought roughly half of the $440,000 bonus he would have gotten in a sale for Corridor.

Jerrold Guben, a bankruptcy attorney representing Rolloffs, proposed to pay Leonard $250,000 plus $50,000 to Fleet Maintenance Manager Tom Durupt and $15,000 to Chief Financial Officer John Kojima.

Faris denied the bonuses, which prevented Rolloffs from paying them. But American Savings agreed to pay the same amounts to Durupt and Kojima and $225,000 to Leonard if Rolloffs was sold for at least $5 million. The sale to West Oahu Aggregate is slated to close Jan. 31.

Shortly before Faris made his ruling, local bankruptcy attorney Wayne Mau, representing the bank, said in a written declaration that Leonard, Durupt and Kojima made “repeated threats” that they would leave Rolloffs prior to a sale if the bank didn’t agree to the bonuses.

Leonard denied that threats were made, and he said he told the bank that he wanted to be compensated fairly if a sale could be made while his team kept working to hold the company together. If the company, which has 83 employees and about 2,000 Oahu customers, folded, Leonard estimated that its assets could have been sold for about $1 million.

“I said I’m not doing this for free,” Leonard said. “In essence we saved the bank $4 million. Two-hundred-twenty-five-grand to save you $4 million — that’s a pretty good deal.”

Faris expressed concern during hearings that the bonuses had been arranged while Rolloffs and American Savings hadn’t committed to sharing any specific amount of sale proceeds with other creditors.

American Savings, which is owed $6.3 million, has a priority to be paid ahead of unsecured creditors that include the city, which is owed about $2.9 million for unpaid fees for receiving rubbish at two facilities.

Only after prodding by Faris was it projected that possibly $450,000 — but maybe far less — would be available out of about $2 million that Rolloffs had yet to collect from customers to pay unsecured creditors.

Leonard said the haggling over how much money the bank would share with unsecured creditors was driven by the bank and shouldn’t have been connected to the bonus arrangement, especially because his team was able to keep Rolloffs viable for a sale.