Naomi Isaacson, CEO of the Dr. R.C. Samanta Roy Institute of Science and Technology Inc., was found in civil contempt of court this week by a federal judge in Minneapolis.
Bankruptcy Judge Nancy Dreher found Isaacson in contempt Thursday for willfully failing to appear in court as ordered and for failing to turn over documents to the trustee in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case.
Dreher directed the U.S. Marshal to bring Isaacson to court for another hearing set for January 4 in Minneapolis.
Through subsidiaries, the institute owns two hotels and three gas stations in Shawano, as well as a gift shop, a fudge-making operation and about 20 pieces of commercial property.
The organization's president is Avraham Cohen, 71, a religious leader who came to Shawano in the early '70s as Rama Behera. In 1990 he changed his name to Rama Chandra Samanta Roy, and then in 2007 changed it to Avraham Cohen.
SIST and some of its subsidiaries have been involved in a string of bankruptcy proceedings since 2009.
The contempt finding comes in the last remaining bankruptcy case. It involves a subsidiary called Yehud-Monosson USA Inc., which owned gas stations/convenience stores in Minnesota. The stations were sold to creditors earlier this year as Yehud's assets were liquidated. The case has continued, however, with a dispute between Yehud and Chapter 7 trustee Nauni Manty over Manty's court-endorsed demands for company documents.
Yehud has maintained it has already surrendered all records in its possession and has nothing else to produce.
But Dreher, in her contempt finding, said Isaacson had failed to turn over, as ordered, Cohen's address and other specific documents.
Last month, though she had been ordered by a judge to do so, Isaacson flatly refused to give Cohen's current address to Manty. Cohen reportedly now lives in the Baltimore area.
Isaacson, who has alleged she is being persecuted on religious grounds and has called Manty such things as "dirty Catholic inquisitor" said in an affidavit, "with respect to Dr. Cohen's address, I am not her (Manty's) clerk or secretary. She has staff that can obtain Dr. Cohen's address rather than asking me to do her dirty job."
In Thursday's order, Dreher left Isaacson a path to expunge the contempt finding – by producing the required documents by December 16, and by appearing at the January 4 hearing.
Also hanging over Isaacson and attorney Rebekah Nett in the court are possible judicial sanctions over a Yehud motion that called judges and bankruptcy trustees "dirty Catholics" and asserted that court systems across the country "are composed of a bunch of ignoramus, bigoted Catholic beasts that carry the sword of the church."
Dreher told Nett and Isaacson that she plans to order them to write public apologies for the filing.
The judge pointed to 10 passages with religious slurs, conspiracy claims or other comments against Dreher and others. Dreher told Nett and Isaacson they could face sanctions of up to $1,000 for each passage.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
