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Potential bidders for Jet Airways Ltd have so far failed to show any firm interest in bailing out the struggling airline, a source involved in the matter said, increasing the likelihood that the company will face bankruptcy proceedings, Reuters reported. Jet, once India’s largest private airline, was forced to stop all flight operations on April 17 after its lenders declined to extend more funds to keep the carrier going. “Companies that had submitted initial expressions of interest are not following up with binding bids,” said the source. A second source involved in the process said bidders had until May 10 to come up with binding offers, a few days later than the April 30 date indicated by lead lender State Bank of India (SBI) last month.

Former Billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications Ltd. will fall back into bankruptcy as an appeals court allowed the beleaguered company’s request to enter the process in an attempt to sell assets, Bloomberg News reported. The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal allowed RCom to withdraw its appeal against insolvency proceedings initiated last year and lifted interim orders that temporarily halted the bankruptcy case. The moratorium on recovery of dues from RCom will continue. Yesterday’s order allowing RCom to be sent back to bankruptcy court is in accordance with the company’s plans, disclosed to the stock exchanges in February, to seek to sell its telecommunications assets and airwave licenses through the insolvency process. Anil Ambani’s older sibling and Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. had earlier offered to purchase RCom’s assets in a 173 billion rupee ($2.5 billion) deal, which would have helped partly pay off lenders. The deal fell through after encountering regulatory hurdles.

Gerry Cotten, founder of the Quadriga CX digital-currency exchange that unraveled after his death, had dealings with the Panamanian firm Crypto Capital Corp. that’s cited in a court order obtained by New York’s attorney general, Bloomberg News reported. Bitfinex customers sent more than $1 billion to Crypto Capital last year, of which $851 million had been “lost, stolen or absconded with,” New York AG Letitia James said in a civil case. She accused Bitfinex and the issuer of virtual currency Tether of participating in a cover-up to hide the loss from Bitfinex customers. She didn’t name Crypto Capital as a defendant. Crypto Capital was familiar to Cotten, whose Vancouver-based firm Quadriga Fintech Solutions Corp. owes 115,000 clients about C$260 million ($193 million) in cryptocurrencies and cash after shutting down in January. Quadriga was primarily run by Cotten, using his laptop, and his sudden death in December exposed problems with payment processors and banks and raised questions about where clients’ Bitcoin was stored. The digital exchange owner is going through bankruptcy proceedings in Canada.

A delegation from a leading Chinese shipbuilding company has arrived in Croatia for talks about a possible investment in the country’s largest shipbuilder Uljanik, which is struggling to avoid bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Officials from the China Shipbuilding Industry Corp. (CSIC) met Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and his economic team today and will visit Uljanik’s docks in the northern Adriatic later this week. Uljanik, which is 25 percent state-owned and operates two shipyards in the northern Adriatic cities of Pula and Rijeka, has been battling liquidity problems that began in 2017. A bankruptcy ruling for the company is scheduled for May 13. Last month the Croatian government said that it would not back a restructuring plan for Uljanik due to the financial burden it would place on the state.

Venezuela’s U.S.-backed opposition government took steps to seek the Trump administration’s help in making a scheduled bond payment that would protect the country’s prized crude oil refiner Citgo Petroleum Corp. from creditors, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Lawmakers in Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly will vote on April 30 to seek approval from the U.S. Treasury Department to tap money that was frozen under U.S. sanctions to make the interest payment. The move underscores the importance of keeping Citgo safe from foreclosure as the stalemate between rival political factions in Venezuela drags on. A failure to pay by state oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela SA could open the door for bondholders to enforce their collateral rights and take control of Citgo, potentially stripping Venezuela of its most valuable foreign oil asset. Although PdVSA technically owes the payment on Monday, there is a grace period of 30 additional days before creditors could call a default and take legal action against Citgo.

A court in Croatia yesterday postponed a bankruptcy ruling for the country’s biggest shipbuilding group Uljanik until May 13, as the government tried to delay activation of state guarantees to a customer for late delivery of a vessel, Reuters reported. The commercial court in the northwestern town of Pazin had already delayed its ruling from March and the decision in May should be final. Bankruptcy would threaten the jobs of around 3,000 workers. Uljanik, which owns two shipyards in the northern Adriatic cities of Pula and Rijeka and is 25 percent owned by the state, has been working to stave off bankruptcy due to liquidity problems that began in 2017. The government has said it will not back a restructuring plan due to the financial burden on the state and doubts the proposal could turn the company’s fortunes around. Last week, a Luxembourg-based company requested the activation of the state guarantees worth 1 billion kuna ($151 million) after an order was not delivered in the agreed time.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said it has agreed not to prosecute one of the country’s biggest gold refineries, Republic Metals Corp. (RMC), after an investigation into possible money laundering, Reuters reported. The probe is part of a broader crackdown by U.S. authorities on imports of gold from South American countries such as Colombia and Peru that is illegally mined or used to launder drug money. Investigators in 2017 said that  another U.S. refiner, Elemetal, had bought billions of dollars’ worth of illegal gold from South America. Several of its employees received jail terms. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida said on Wednesday that it had agreed a non-prosecution deal with RMC after “an investigation focusing on money laundering and violations of the Bank Secrecy Act.” RMC would continue to cooperate with an ongoing investigation and improve its anti-money laundering and compliance programs, it said in a statement on its website. Miami-based RMC declared bankruptcy last year. Its assets are being bought by rival refiner Asahi.

Venezuela’s creditors could threaten to seize not just Citgo Petroleum Corp. but other state-owned assets in an effort to collect on debts incurred under the ruling leftist regime, according to a lawyer for the country’s national oil company, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Joseph Pizzurro, who represents oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela SA, said during an appeals court hearing in Philadelphia that the seizure of its prized refining subsidiary Citgo to cover a $1.4 billion debt would open up other public enterprises owned by foreign countries to debt-collection lawsuits. The dispute concerns an arbitration award obtained by Crystallex International Corp., a defunct Canadian miner that targeted Citgo in U.S. court for compensation over a failed mining venture in Venezuela. Crystallex won a court order in Delaware last year that allowed it to seize shares in Citgo’s U.S. corporate parent. But the company has been blocked from selling those shares by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit while it weighs if the seizure was valid. The appeals court on Monday deferred a ruling on Crystallex’s bid to conduct the sale, a request that has implications for the Trump administration’s foreign policy and the U.S.-backed opposition government in Caracas. Other companies with money judgments against Venezuela are already following Crystallex’s lead, “lining up at the courthouse door in Delaware” to carve up Citgo, Pizzurro said.