{"id":15372,"date":"2012-05-07T03:10:52","date_gmt":"2012-05-07T03:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newspaper.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=15372"},"modified":"2012-05-07T03:10:52","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T03:10:52","slug":"us-trustee-also-wants-fund-chapter-11-petition-junked-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/us-trustee-also-wants-fund-chapter-11-petition-junked-2\/","title":{"rendered":"US Trustee also wants Fund Chapter 11 petition junked"},"content":{"rendered":"
7 appointed to committee of creditors<\/div>\n
By Ferdie de la Torre
\nReporter<\/div>\n

The U.S. Trustee has asked the U.S. District Court for the NMI Bankruptcy Division to dismiss the NMI Retirement Fund’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition.<\/p>\n

Assistant U.S. Trustee Curtis Ching echoed the position of two unnamed retirees represented by attorney Bruce Jorgensen that the Fund’s structure and statutory existence makes it clear that it is a \u201cgovernmental unit\u201d of the CNMI.<\/p>\n

Ching said that under Title 11, a debtor must be a \u201cperson\u201d in order to be eligible to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and may not, under the statutory definition, be a \u201cgovernmental unit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs such, the [Fund] cannot be a \u201cperson\u201d for purposes of Title 11 and is therefore ineligible to be a Chapter 11 debtor. This case must therefore be dismissed,\u201d Ching said in a 14-page motion.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Trustee, a component of the U.S. Department of Justice, protects the integrity of the bankruptcy system by overseeing case administration and litigation to enforce bankruptcy laws.<\/p>\n

Jorgensen’s co-counsel, Margery Bronster, earlier sought the dismissal of the bankruptcy petition, arguing that the Fund is a \u201cgovernmental unit\u201d and an \u201cagency of the Commonwealth\u201d and is therefore not a \u201cperson\u201d eligible to file the petition under the Bankruptcy Code.<\/p>\n

As this developed, Ching appointed Friday seven persons as members of a committee of creditors holding unsecured claims: Roman Tudela, Mariano Taitano, Christopher Leon Guerrero, Sapuro Rayphand, Barbara Torres, Juan Cepeda, and Paul Joyce.<\/p>\n

The Fund separately filed at least four motions over the weekend.<\/p>\n

The Fund, through counsels Braddock J. Huesman and Jeremy B. Coffey, asked the court to issue an order setting July 31, 2012, at 5pm (Saipan time) as a bar date for the filing of proofs of claim against the Fund.<\/p>\n

The Fund is also seeking a court order authorizing the retention and employment of the law office of Huesman as special counsel and designated counsel for the Fund in the bankruptcy case.<\/p>\n

The third motion is an application for an order authorizing the employment and retention of Buck Consultants as an actuarial consultant for the Fund.<\/p>\n

The fourth motion is for an order providing for the continued payment of certain benefits to certain retirees of the government and autonomous CNMI agencies, their survivors, and\/or certain disabled persons.<\/p>\n

The Fund counsel told the court that the intent of filing the Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition is to restructure the Fund’s obligation and not to shut down the agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 appointed to committee of creditors By Ferdie de la Torre Reporter The U.S. Trustee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}