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CRA wants role as ‘creditor’ in Fund bankruptcy proceedings
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Posted on Apr 30 2012
Commonwealth Retirement Association board chair Lorenzo LG. Cabrera has asked the U.S. District Court for the NMI Bankruptcy Division to include the organization as a creditor in the NMI Retirement Fund’s Chapter 11 proceedings.
As this developed, the Commonwealth Ports Authority, through counsel Robert T. Torres, filed in court Friday a notice of entry of appearance as an intervenor in the proceedings.
In a letter to the court filed Friday, Cabrera said that when he received word from a third-party that the Fund trustees were meeting a week ago, he immediately called CRA treasurer Oscar C. Camacho and asked him to plead with the trustees to consider putting off their plan to file for bankruptcy.
“We contend that the trustees’ plan is both untimely and unwarranted,” Cabrera said.
He said the amount of money the Fund now has for its operation and payment to pension benefits to retirees and other creditors is adequate for another two years or until July 2014—a timeframe that is more than adequate for the CNMI government to put in place viable solutions to rectify the Fund’s conditions.
At the same time, Cabrera pointed out that the Fund has had ample time to use every legal remedy to collect on the Superior Court’s judgment in June 2009, but instead it chose to employ a process that could effectively deny beneficiaries their pension benefits, which to most retirees are the only source of income for all their financial needs.
“A good number of retirees, who are old and ill, especially those who are on dialysis, could (sic) care less if the Fun lives beyond June 2014. They want their pension and they want it without reduction,” he said.
Cabrera said the action of the trustees to file for bankruptcy was “unnecessary and insensitive.”
He said the court needs to defer all actions necessary for restructuring to the CNMI government as the government alone has the authority to decide whether the Fund should continue to exist, be abolished, or be replaced by a different program.
The next bankruptcy hearing will be on June 1 at 9:30am.
U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Hawaii Chief Bankruptcy Judge Robert J. Faris will be conducting the hearing.
