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The Archdiocese of Santa Fe's most iconic building will be mortgaged to help cover settlements to clergy sexual abuse victims, Archbishop John C. Wester said in a recent letter to parishes, the Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal reported. The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, known as the "mother church" of the archdiocese, and any other properties that are mortgaged will not be lost because parishes will chip in to cover the payments on the debt, Wester said in his June 17 letter. Parishes will collectively need to borrow up to $12 million to cover the gap in the archdiocese's $75 million share of the bankruptcy settlement, according to the letter. The archdiocese is asking each parish to take on a portion of that debt. Representatives for clergy sex abuse survivors and the archdiocese announced in mid-May that they'd agreed to a $121.5 million fund to compensate hundreds of people who say they suffered childhood sexual abuse by priests and other clergy dating back to the 1990s. Wester said that the archdiocese is working to secure financing from two Catholic lenders — the Catholic Order of Foresters and the Notre Dame Federal Credit Union. The archdiocese must pay $65 million by the end of September, and the remaining $10 million by the end of next March.

Mexico's troubled payroll lender Credito Real said in a filing to the Mexican stock exchange late Wednesday that it was aware of claims of a filing of an involuntary chapter 11 bankruptcy petition, which it would fight once the petition was served, Reuters reported. "The company believes the Involuntary Petition is improper and was filed as a litigation tactic in the U.S. by certain alleged minority creditors to gain leverage in negotiations with the company," Credito Real said.

A bankruptcy judge sent the former parent companies of Maxus Energy Corp. to trial over creditor allegations that they stripped the now-defunct subsidiary of assets and should pay as much as $14 billion for its obligation to clean up New Jersey’s Passaic River, the Wall Street Journal reported. Judge Christopher Sontchi of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., declined to grant pretrial judgment in litigation alleging Argentina’s YPF SA and Spain’s Repsol SA hollowed out Maxus to extract its value, while leaving its environmental debts unpaid when it filed for chapter 11 protection in 2016. A spokesperson for YPF declined to comment. The companies have denied the allegations. A Repsol representative said the judge’s decision “leaves open the question of Repsol’s liability and damages, if any, which are now the subject of a trial. Repsol intends to continue defending against the claims and believes it will be vindicated.” The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Maxus creditors after its bankruptcy, concerns a manufacturing site on the Passaic River where a corporate predecessor made herbicides and pesticides decades ago, including the defoliant Agent Orange. YPF, an Argentine oil giant, bought Maxus in 1995 to gain a foothold in U.S. oil-and-gas exploration and only later came to understand the extent of its environmental liabilities at the Newark, N.J., site, according to Wednesday’s ruling.

The company and its affiliates built over 1,100 rowhouses in Philly and planned major developments on the city’s waterfront, as well as in northern New Jersey, New York City, and Palm Beach, Fla., the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. In a national advertising blitz, it promised investors big-bucks returns of 12% — perhaps better than 20%. But on Tuesday, New Jersey issued a “cease and desist” order against the Secaucus-based National Realty Investment Advisors alleging they “fraudulently” sold $630 million worth of securities in the last four years to “at least” 1,800 investors nationwide. The state Bureau of Securities found that rather than relying on cash-flow proceeds, company officers used investors’ money to pay off other investors and diverted “millions of investor dollars to make lavish payments to family members,” the state Attorney General’s Office said. That included pay for a no-work job for the wife of portfolio manager Thomas N. Salzano, who last year was criminally charged with fraud by federal authorities. Officers hired “family-owned or controlled companies,” New Jersey officials said, among them a construction company in which Salzano’s son was chief financial officer. While NRIA and its entities haven’t been charged criminally, they have been under investigation by federal agencies and officials in three states. The 63-page order itemized what the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office called “unlawful conduct,” mandating that the company “cease and desist” engaging in it. It was unclear whether NRIA, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, plans to appeal the order. The order prohibits NRIA “from engaging in the conduct described in the order itself, or from further securities law violations,” and publicizes the alleged fraud, the state Attorney General’s Office said. It was unclear how the order would be enforced.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Bayer AG's bid to dismiss legal claims by customers who contend its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer as the German company seeks to avoid potentially billions of dollars in damages, Reuters reported. The justices turned away a Bayer appeal and left in place a lower court decision that upheld $25 million in damages awarded to California resident Edwin Hardeman, a Roundup user who blamed his cancer on the pharmaceutical and chemical giant's glyphosate-based weedkillers. The Supreme Court's action dealt a blow to Bayer as the company maneuvers to limit its legal liability in thousands of cases. The justices have a second petition pending on a related issue that they could act upon in the coming weeks. U.S. President Joe Biden's administration in May urged the court not to hear the Bayer appeal, reversing the government's position previously taken under former President Donald Trump. Bayer has lost three trials in which Roundup users have been awarded tens of millions of dollars in each, while also winning four trials. Bayer had pinned hopes for relief on the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which has a reputation for being pro-business. Bayer said it "respectfully disagrees" with the court's decision and that the company is "fully prepared to manage the litigation risk associated with potential future claims in the U.S." On Friday, a federal appeals court ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take a fresh look at whether the active ingredient glyphosate poses unreasonable risks to humans and the environment. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with several environmental, farm worker and food safety advocacy groups that the EPA did not adequately consider whether glyphosate causes cancer and threatens endangered species.

Hertz Corp. has offered to settle about three dozen cases filed by renters that say they were wrongly arrested for auto theft, the company said, Bloomberg News reported. The settlement push comes after Colleen Batcheler took over as general counsel for the rental company. During her first month on the job, Batcheler made it her top priority to end suits from more than 230 customers accusing Hertz of improperly calling in police on its renters, mostly while haggling about overdue rentals. “We’ve tried to take a step back and say ‘How can we make progress in a way that is fair to our customers and is based on individual facts and circumstances,’” Batcheler said in an interview. Hertz lost a key court battle earlier this month when a federal judge allowed more than 70 customers to sue for false arrests. Until then, Hertz had successfully forced nearly all of the lawsuits to remain under the supervision of a bankruptcy judge in Wilmington, Delaware. Batcheler declined to say how much money the company was offering to the alleged victims and their families.

Revlon Inc. received bankruptcy court approval to borrow $375 million on Friday, saying it would use the funds to shore up supply chain problems that would otherwise imperil the cosmetic maker's sales during the busy Christmas season, Reuters reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones in New York approved Revlon's proposed bankruptcy loan on an interim basis after hearing testimony that Revlon was down to $6 million in cash and struggling to fulfill retail customer orders. Revlon chief restructuring officer Robert Caruso testified Friday that most of Revlon's raw material vendors have stopped sending shipments, and many were demanding payment of past debts or deposits on future deliveries. Without access to raw materials, Revlon cannot meet sales demands, leaving the company with dwindling cash to solve its supply problem, Caruso added. The company is currently able to fill 70% of customer orders without backlog or cancellations, compared to an industry standard of 90-95%, Caruso said. "That will play a big role in how customers think about resetting store shelves for next year," Caruso said in court. "If we are not able to get the money in and restore our supply chain and meet our customer orders, we will have a lot of harm to the business.” In a worst-case scenario, Revlon could also face impacts into 2023, since retailers are going to be making long-term decisions about which products to stock in September, Caruso said.

The cryptocurrency market’s latest swoon is giving investors a painful lesson about the risks of trading digital tokens through intermediaries, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Sliding digital asset values pushed lending service Celsius Network LLC this week to freeze all customer withdrawals and explore options that include a financial restructuring. In a bankruptcy restructuring, crypto investors would be navigating uncharted territory. What can safely be predicted is that there will be litigation, and there will be delay,” said Prof. Adam Levitin of Georgetown University Law. Crypto exchanges and lending services provide individual investors an on-ramp to markets, but the cryptocurrency that customers put on these platforms might not belong to them in the eyes of a bankruptcy court, according to regulators and legal experts. If a cryptocurrency company goes bust, its users’ digital assets will likely go into the bankruptcy estate that lawyers, financial advisers, lenders and other creditors divvy up. Customer assets could be repaid at a loss, rather than simply returned to the users. Even if customers of a troubled cryptocurrency firm eventually get access to their tokens, they still could suffer big losses if the market turned against them while the bankruptcy played out. Many people were motivated to put crypto assets in Celsius to earn interest rates as high as 18%. The lender took customer deposits and put them in decentralized finance investments to get a return or lent the funds out to other users for a fee.