I'll add my 5 cents re treatment of pax, staff, laws, fiddling with taxes and such, "force majeure" etc...I don't doubt he's creative when it comes to circumventing or bending certain civil laws, in a most likely fully "legal" way (yet a grey area as no court has yet looked at some of his practices in detail) however I think he is highly rational and would never consider to risk breaking penal/criminal law. Bankruptcy fraud would be the latter. There are big difference between the two bodies of law:
Civil law redresses wrongs by compelling compensation: the wrongdoer is not punished; he only suffers so much harm as is necessary to make good the wrong he has done. A case needs to be filed by a private party, and the claimant must produce evidence for a judge to find a wrongdoer liable.
In Criminal law on the other hand the object is not to compensate victims but to punish the wrongdoer, police/the government (with all their powers) investigate to find evidence, court cases are filed by the government, prison is an option if the defendant is found guilty.
Creatively bending some civil laws is unlikely to seriously hurt his "baby", the business he built, or himself; quite contrarily, he can probably get some advantages for his business, at a low risk, and make it grow. Most entrepreneurs/owners have strong feelings for the business they built, and wouldn't consciously risk to destroy it and lose everything (unlike some ruthless Enron-type "management" without an ownership interest).
While I don't trust my own understanding of laws a lot, BK as a trained lawyer, although not a practicing specialist in corporate or labor law, has access to very sound specialist legal advice, and I consider it highly unlikely he, at his age and with his background, would make such basic mistakes that would make him a criminal. Again, just my 5 cents.
Last edited by deptrai; 7th Mar 2015 at 16:47.