except perhaps temporarily.

Barry is the CEO of VitaPro Foods Inc. It sells textured vegetable protein soy-based meat substitutes, primarily to prisons and other institutional feeding operations.[3] According to an investigative report by the Montreal Gazette from October 1998, Global Village Market (GVM) was a venture owned by Barry through which he sold VitaPro.[5] The company’s motto was “doing well by doing good”.[5] According to a report by UPI, GVM’s shares were listed on the World Investors' Stock Exchange, which was part of an investment fraud carried out by the Caribbean-based First International Bank of Grenada.[13] Barry developed VitaPro in 1989 or 1990.[1][14] It was originally a South African venture.[3] According to the VitaPro website, the company now operates from Belize and Bulgaria.[15] When asked about VitaPro earnings, Barry said: “My company is terribly private in a bunch of countries. I’m a resident of the Bahamas. I don’t pay tax. I’m not American. Let’s say we do over a billion dollars in business. How much I earn is up to me. I give it to kids. I made a deal with God that whatever I save in tax, I give to kids.”[16] Barry also owns another venture called ProPectin, a Bulgarian company he purchased in 2009 that manufactures a pharmaceutical-grade apple pectin, which Barry credits for having cured his Type II diabetes.[3]

In 1982, Barry was convicted of extortion from and conspiracy against John Royden McConnell, and served 10 months of a 6-year prison term.[4][23] In a 1982 civil case, a separate court ruled that Barry had extorted money from McConnell in record company dealings, requiring a financial award of C$285,000.[10] In 1987 he declared bankruptcy, voiding the award.[24][1] Barry said in an October 2013 Larry King interview that he had been a cocaine-addicted, twenty-something rocker at the time and credited the extortion conviction for changing his personal life.[25] In 1998, Barry was indicted on corruption charges related to a VitaPro contract worth US$34 million with the Texas prisons.[26][27] In 1999, the Texas Supreme Court ruled the VitaPro contract with the Texas prisons was invalid.[28] After a trial in 2001, he was initially declared guilty, but the verdict was thrown out by U.S district court judge and a new trial was ordered in 2007.[26] He was then acquitted in 2008 after a bench retrial.[26] Barry said the charges were politically motivated.[24][27] In 2014, Barry sued four Wikipedia editors for defamation for their edits to this page.[29]