Kevin Maxwell, with a British court's permission, flew to the United States Tuesday to work on a reorganization plan for the New York Daily News, one of the pieces of his late father's disintegrating media empire.
The Financial Times said banks face the loss of up to $1.35 billion on loans to Maxwell Communication Corp. and substantial but unspecified losses on loans to other Maxwell companies.In the weeks since the the body of Robert Maxwell was found in the Atlantic near his yacht in the Canary Islands, reports about his financial machinations have shown him undertaking increasingly desperate and ethically questionable attempts to keep his businesses from collapsing.
The cause of his death has not been determined, although preliminary findings by Spanish coroners indicate he could have fallen into the sea after suffering a heart attack.
The developments since have created a scandalous uproar in Britain, where Maxwell was once regarded as a scrappy business hero but is now seen by many as a conniving scoundrel who looted pension funds to prop up his companies.
It also has focused attention on Britain's notoriously lax accounting system, which allows corporations enormous leeway in how they report financial results.
On Monday, an accountant hired by Maxwell's banks said he had been unable to trace more than half of the $1.2 billion Maxwell secretly siphoned from his public and private companies.
The Daily News, once the largest-circulation daily paper in the United States, filed for protection from creditors in bankruptcy court last week.