A number of Optimum's creditors have this week filed a lawsuit against the company and its owner Patrick Drahi over a debt restructuring at his US telco.

The lawsuit was filed by a large group of creditors, including Apollo Global Management and Oaktree Capital, at a New York state court against Optimum and associated entities, controlling shareholder Drahi, former CEO Dexter Goei, and numerous others.

Optimum has been operating as a brand of Altice USA since 2016, when Altice completed its acquisition of Cablevision for $17.7 billion. The company offers Internet, television, mobile, and home phone services in 21 states.

In the lawsuit filed earlier this week, lenders noted a series of transactions undertaken by Optimum, which they allege moved away assets for the benefit of its majority shareholders. The creditors allege that the company executed these collateral transfers, even though there was no legitimate business reason.

The creditors claim that Optimum group orchestrated a series of fraudulent transfers designed to move billions of dollars in assets out of reach of the debtholders to protect their own equity interests by placing them ahead of creditor claims on the $21 billion Optimum entities owe in debt, despite the company already being insolvent.

"The company is hopelessly insolvent and has been for some time— a direct and inevitable result of Drahi’s infamous business strategy, the 'Altice Way,'" said the creditors in the filing.

In the complaint, Optimum is accused of operating the "Altice Way," which it claims to be a business strategy used by Drahi.

The creditors state that this is a “churn and burn” approach, which they said Drahi and his "hand-picked executive team of loyalists" aim to create substantial short-term value by aggressively cutting costs and incurring substantial amounts of debt without regard to (and at the expense of) the business’s long-term outlook.

"The short-term value created by the 'Altice Way' is then siphoned off to Drahi and his associates through management fees, dividends or gratuitous compensation awards, while the business is left with hamstrung operations and unsustainable debt obligations and, ultimately, its creditors suffer the consequences of Drahi’s value stripping," wrote the bondholders.

It comes after Optimum announced in June that it had moved its Cablevision business into an “unrestricted holdco”, on which creditors did not have a claim.

The new entity raised $3bn of senior debt from JPMorgan Chase and $300 million of junior preferred equity from outside investors of the existing Optimum creditor group.

At the time, Optimum said the restructuring would create a path forward for the company and its creditors to reach an agreement.

Optimum has denied the allegations against the company, stating that it "strongly disagrees with the co-op group’s allegations and believes their claims are without merit.”

Drahi is currently pushing to sell off Altice's French mobile business as the company looks to pay down its debts.

The company is open to selling its telecoms business and recently spun off its French data center assets, forming a new company with more than 250 facilities in France, which were then sold to Morgan Stanley.

Altice has been in talks over a deal to sell its Portuguese mobile unit, and has separately looked to sell off its data center unit in the country. The telco also notably sold its 24.5 percent stake in BT.

Earlier this year, the company also shortlisted four bidders for a controlling stake in French fiber company XpFibre, in which Altice currently owns a majority stake of 50.01 percent.