Righteous Dollar Bills: the 17 Creditors That Lost the Most in the Diocese of Helena's Bankruptcy

By Landon Hemsley
Independent Record
April 14, 2015

http://helenair.com/news/local/righteous-dollar-bills-the-creditors-that-lost-the-most-in/collection_7dd7734e-6d9a-5c91-83ff-abed4ba0e149.html

Bankruptcies are painful for many, but especially for those who are owed money they will never receive.

As part of the Diocese of Helena's bankruptcy proceeding, the court released a document entailing the 20 creditors who lost the most when the Diocese declared bankruptcy.

Two of the 20 creditors were identified one group of 95 and a second group of 268 "abuse claimaints." The amount of money these two groups of claimants lost in the bankruptcy is not revealed in the court documents. One of the claimants had two separate claims in the document, bringing the total of known claimants to 17.

The Diocese is passing through a chapter 11 bankruptcy, which means the Diocese has declared that it is working to restore its ability to pay obligations that it is presently unable to honor; it has not declared that it will be unable to pay those obligations forever.

Most of the claimants held deposits in a private bank the Diocese had set up for itself. Called a Deposit and Loan (D&L), funds from this private bank were used in day-to-day operations of the Diocese and its parishes in addition to maintaining and building facilities.

With respect to many of the creditors that lost money in the D&L, the Diocese has established a restoration trust operated by members of several different parishes and not by the Diocese central office. The Diocese says it is confident this trust fund will be able to bring some recovery in the future to those creditors who lost substantial amounts in the D&L, but while the trust is attempting to bring the D&L back from the dead, those creditors are out of luck.

Other than the two creditors that lost an undisclosed amount in the bankruptcy, these are the 17 creditors that lost the most when the Diocese sought bankruptcy protection.