The trustees of the extensive estate of Howard Paterson have declined to reveal if a combined debt of $560,000 has been paid by businessmen the trust has applied to bankrupt.
Former business partners Ewan Carr, of Otago, and Rodney Humphries, of Auckland, had separate bankruptcy proceedings lodged against them by the Otago Trustee Company Ltd in the High Court at Dunedin, in mid-July.
The trust is seeking bankruptcy notices against Mr Carr, claiming a debt of $269,000 from him, and Mr Humphries, for a debt of $290,000, from farm machinery sales.
According to public notices, Mr Carr and Mr Humphries had 10 days until July 25 to pay their respective debts, but a spokesman for the Otago Trustee Company, which administers the estate of entrepreneurial Dunedin businessman Howard Paterson, who died in Fiji in July 2003, declined to say whether the debts had been settled.
The total $560,000 debt predates the separate $30 million receivership of the Big Sky Dairy Farm near Patearoa, in 2007, which has prompted bitter legal proceedings between Mr Carr and Mr Humphries.
The original debts were held by UDC Finance for farm machinery and were granted to the finance company by court order last September, then assigned to Otago Trustee by order in November.
A High Court order in May granted that Otago Trustee, formed in November 2003, was entitled to enforce the order, as the trust had settled the original debt.
