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Hawaii lawmakers say the state must change how it oversees vacant lands, staffs its fire departments and deals with property owners who fail to adequately prevent wildfires, months after a deadly blaze on Maui destroyed the town of Lahaina, the Wall Street Journal reported. The recommendations, laid out in a legislative report released Friday, call for an overhaul of the state’s fire-prevention and emergency-response policies. A special committee of more than a dozen state representatives was asked by Hawaii House Speaker Scott Saiki to come up with specific wildfire-prevention proposals shortly after the Aug. 8 fire that killed 100 people. A preliminary draft of the report was made public last month. The final recommendations seek to address many of the most severe shortcomings identified after the Lahaina blaze. They are expected to be turned into legislation and take priority during the coming January session, though specifics still need to be worked out. Among the recommendations is a proposal to raise taxes on lands that aren’t being used for public purposes or don’t have a sufficient conservation plan. Another would create new requirements for landowners to create and maintain “defensible space” around their land and tighten enforcement. Some Hawaiian municipalities already have ordinances related to clearing flammable brush, but they have been difficult to enforce, wildfire experts said.

FTX Trading Ltd. unveiled its latest proposal for returning billions of dollars to customers and creditors, kicking off a final round of potential squabbles about how best to end the bankruptcy case of the fraud-tainted crypto firm, Bloomberg News reported. The reorganization plan left some of the most important questions unanswered, including whether FTX will restart its defunct crypto exchange, how the company will estimate the value of some digital tokens and how much creditors can expect to get back. Next year, the plan will be sent to creditors for a vote — likely with key details added — before it goes to US Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey for final approval. The major creditor and customer groups that have been involved in the chapter 11 case have agreed to the broad outlines of the plan. The payout plan calls for billions of dollars to be distributed as cash after much of the firm’s cryptocurrencies have been liquidated. Last month, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of orchestrating a massive fraud that led to the collapse of his FTX exchange. The company filed for bankruptcy last year after Bankman-Fried agreed to turn over control of his empire to restructuring professionals. Since then, the advisers have been tracking down assets and trying to untangle a complex web of debt owed to various creditors, including customers who put cash and crypto on the trading platform.

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Friday proposed a bankruptcy exit plan that offers to settle with Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims’ families by paying them at least $55 million over 10 years, Bloomberg News reported. The amount represents at least $30 million less than what the families had proposed, and is a fraction of the roughly $1.4 billion judges ruled they’re owed in defamation judgments against Jones related to to his lies that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax. Jones filed for bankruptcy protection a year ago, after the judgments. Those who choose to settle with Jones would share in a pot of at least $5.5 million annually over 10 years, according to a chapter 11 plan Jones filed with the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas on Friday. The plan requires court approval. Beyond that annual minimum, family members who settle could receive all the disposable income from Jones’ bankrupt Infowars parent company, Free Speech System LLC, plus half of his own income over five years, and then a quarter of his income for the next five years, according to his plan. In exchange for settling with Jones, Sandy Hook victim families would receive faster payments but wouldn’t be able to continue to chase him down after his plan for the full worth of their litigation claims, according to the proposal.

Crypto firm SafeMoon filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy with the United States Bankruptcy Court of Utah State yesterday, the Crypto Times reported. Safemoon’s chapter 7 bankruptcy filing represents the voluntary liquidation of the company, which has an estimated asset value of $10 million to $50 million. The bankruptcy filing comes nearly a month after the U.S. SEC accused Safemoon of fraud and security law violations. On November 2, the SEC charged Safemoon executives for $200 million of project development funds, which they allegedly used for personal expenses and investments. Following the bankruptcy filing, the project’s SFM token dropped over 50% in the past 24 hours, with its market cap dropping to merely $18 million, which once peaked at $1 billion in February 2022, according to market data from Coinmarketcap.

Drugmakers and distributors pledged tens of billions of dollars to settle lawsuits accusing them of helping fuel the country’s opioid crisis. But much of the money may never be paid, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Opioid victims are finding that billions of settlement dollars have been snared in the nation’s bankruptcy system, where they face financial engineering by sophisticated investors and management teams, roadblocks from the federal government, and extensive legal wrangling and costs. The Supreme Court last week heard the Justice Department’s argument for why OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s roughly $8 billion settlement should be scrapped even though it has the support of nearly all opioid victims who voted on the matter. Pharmaceutical manufacturers Mallinckrodt and Endo International both completed transactions that gave priority to the interests of their financial creditors over those of opioid victims, and rewarded the companies’ top executives with bonuses or accelerated compensation before filing for chapter 11. The drug industry has committed to provide more than $50 billion to address the opioid crisis, with most of the funds coming from major pharmaceutical manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson and retailers such as CVS and Walgreens. About $10 billion would have come from Purdue Pharma, Mallinckrodt and Endo, which all filed for bankruptcy to pause mass lawsuits as they negotiated settlement agreements with state and local governments, individual victims and their family members. Those companies said chapter 11 would be the best forum to equitably distribute funds to the opioid claimants and government bodies. But the settlement deals they agreed to have been either delayed or eliminated in long and expensive court proceedings. Victims are left wondering whether payments will ever arrive, while people continue to die of overdoses and governments struggle to address the continuing epidemic.

Bankruptcy Judge Paul Warren has declined to kill a $63.5 million deal between Continental Insurance Co. and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester in the diocese’s bankruptcy. Warren’s decision came after he called off a Dec. 8 hearing in which the insurer and the official committee of unsecured creditors were expected to present oral arguments, the Rochester Diocese reported. Judge Warren’s decision, handed down later the same day, leaves questions to be settled: whether either or both rival plans of reorganization presented by Continental and the diocese can be put up to a vote by creditors, and whether Continental can collect damages from the diocese for expenses the insurer says it bore after the diocese pulled out of the 2022 settlement agreement. Approval of the reorganization plan by creditors and the court is needed before payments can be made to the 485 survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of priests and other church functionaries seeking compensation from the diocese. Before calling off the Dec. 8 hearing, Judge Warren, hoping to avoid protracted litigation in the already drawn-out bankruptcy, had invited the parties to work out a global settlement. In his decision, the judge called his failed attempt to cut short the contentious proceedings “a perhaps naïve but well-intended effort.”

A federal judge took steps to end a protracted dispute between FTX and its largest creditor at a bankruptcy hearing, signaling the court could try to speed up efforts to recover FTX customer's funds from the failed crypto firm's estate. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey scheduled a hearing for early next year to calculate the crypto exchange's debt to the IRS, a sticking point that has stagnated efforts to remunerate the exchange's many victims. As FTX's largest creditor, the IRS' claim must be resolved before FTX victim's can recover their losses. During the bankruptcy hearing, the judge said that while FTX's bankruptcy was "a complicated case," it still needs to be resolved more quickly. "The idea here in bankruptcy, tax court bankruptcy, is we're trying to get to conclusions occlusions quickly and be as accurate as possible without wasting a lot of time and resources of the state or the other creditors," he said near the end of the hearing.

A senior U.S. Justice Department official defended the use of settlements that let companies avoid pleading guilty after senators questioned whether prosecutors have been too soft on corporate crime, including by not charging the Sackler family members who own Purdue Pharma, the Wall Street Journal reported. Settlement agreements known as deferred prosecution agreements and nonprosecution agreements, which stop short of requiring corporate guilty pleas, don’t let businesses off the hook, Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri, who heads the department’s criminal division, said Tuesday at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “Those are really serious agreements that are highly negotiated,” she said. “They require forward-looking change by a company. They’re not a pass.” Senators from both parties raised concerns about the Justice Department’s efforts to crack down on corporate crime. The lawmakers focused on the use of the settlement agreements along with decisions in some instances to not prosecute executives. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the committee chairman, questioned the Justice Department’s decision not to bring criminal charges against members of the Sackler family in connection with a 2020 criminal resolution involving Purdue Pharma. Purdue pleaded guilty to charges related to its efforts to push sales of the opioid painkiller OxyContin, but Sackler family members weren’t charged. “Corporate executives have little incentive to change their criminal conduct without fear of real consequences for their actions,” Durbin said. “Right now, they’re not worried about much more than a measly fine, a rounding error compared to the enormous profits like the Sacklers’.’” (Subscription required.)

U.S. officials will take money away from victims of the fraud-tainted crypto firm, FTX Trading Ltd. unless a judge rejects the government’s demand for $24 billion in unpaid taxes, the bankrupt company said in a court filing, Bloomberg News reported. The two sides will be in court today arguing over the best procedures to determine how much of the Internal Revenue Service claim is legitimate. FTX wants to set a quick schedule to estimate the claim; the IRS has argued that its audit is ongoing, so asking a judge to estimate how much FTX might owe in taxes is inappropriate. Going forward with a court-supervised estimation process will show that FTX lost money in the three-years it operated, so it could not possibly owe IRS any substantial amount, the company said in court papers filed Sunday. And any money that it could be forced to pay would harm victims of FTX, the company said. In court papers, federal officials said they would eventually amend the $24 billion claim to reclassify at least some as lower-priority, unsecured debt. “The government is not looking for a windfall, only to determine the correct amount of the tax liabilities,” federal lawyers said in the filing. Last month, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of orchestrating a massive fraud that led to the collapse of his FTX exchange. The company filed for bankruptcy last year after Bankman-Fried agreed to turn over control of his empire to restructuring professionals. Since then, the advisers have been tracking down assets and trying to untangle a complex web of debt owed to various creditors, including customers who put cash and crypto on the trading platform.

The Diocese of Sacramento will seek chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after more than 250 lawsuits claiming sexual abuse by clergy and other staff, Bishop Jaime Soto said on Saturday, CBSNews.com reported. Soto said the diocese intends to seek chapter 11 protection by March 2024. "There are many victim-survivors awaiting compensation for the reprehensible sins committed against them," Soto said in a statement to his parishioners. "The diocese faces more than 250 lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by clergy or other church staff. The reorganization process will allow me to equitably respond to the large number of those who are victim-survivors of abuse." A fund would be created to distribute to all victims, the diocese said. "Without such a process, it is likely that diocesan funds would be exhausted by the first cases to proceed to trial, leaving nothing for the many other victim-survivors still waiting for compensation," the diocese said in a statement. Soto announced in March that filing for bankruptcy was a possibility.