A LOT OF FORMERS, ALL IN COURT
The former husband of the former owner of the Alaska Dispatch News is getting involved in the bankruptcy proceedings of his former wife, Alice Rogoff.
Rogoff filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Aug. 12, and that proceeding eventually became a Chapter 7 liquidation, which is now being sorted out by the courts. David Rubenstein, her ex, is getting dragged in.
This week, Rogoff’s attorney asked the court to hold off granting access to her bank accounts until Rubenstein’s lawyers can take a look at them.
Rogoff is battling the bankruptcy plaintiffs who want her to use her personal finances to make whole the dozens of creditors she — or her broken company technically — has across Alaska. There are debts in the millions of dollars to everyone from reporters to GCI. In addition, she said her company owes her over $16 million, too.
Rogoff sold the news operation to the Binkley Company in September for $1 million after she had run the newspaper into the ground. The Binkley Co. restored the newspaper’s former name, the Anchorage Daily News.
While Rubenstein’s finanical strength would allow the jet-setting financier to simply pay off Rogoff’s creditors, he’s evidently not willing to do that yet. Instead, he has hired lawyers to file an objection to anyone seeing the terms of their marital settlement.
“Rogoff’s ex-husband David Rubenstein has a contractual confidentiality right in the MSA (marital settlement agreement) that must be respected,” his attorneys wrote the courts. If the terms of the settlement are probed, Rubenstein’s lawyers are saying they’ll seek remedies, although they don’t say what remedies they have in mind.
Rogoff is politically connected, but Rubenstein is a political powerhouse, and that might come into play. If the contractors, suppliers and former landlords thought they were simply battling an eccentric heiress who skips out on her bills, they’re now facing a sultan of the upper crust of American society, one who has real resources that he can bring to bear.
The Alaska Journal of Commerce has the latest twists and turns in a case that has fascinated Alaskans.
[Read: Rubenstein wants agreement with ex-wife kept out of court]
