@Rose & Mike:
Your story is not complete...
(personally, when somebody is accused, I always listen first his personal explication. There are perhaps lawyers here, but also a lot of judges...).
"amiga-news.de: In comments on ANN both of you gave some facts and details. Petro stated that Bill and Raquel fought very hard for VisCorp (his employer those times) to buy AMIGA in the times of Escom bankruptcy. Petro said he believes bPlan are capable of managing the future. Bill stated that Thendic-France contracted bPlan to do some development work. Specifically, to develop the eclipsis. Bill, you said also your company worked very closely with Petro in 1995 and 1996. What did that mean exactly?
Thendic France: We did. Raquel and I paid the salaries and social/tax of the Amiga Inc. personnel from June 1996 through November 1996 ourselves, personally (so we had some "bucks" too...). It was the arrangement we made with Mr. Hembach, the Escom Bankruptcy Trustee, for the benefit of VisCorp and was the only way to keep Amiga alive. Our VisCorp Board agreed initially, but they did not support the effort as the details of the Escom bankruptcy became more public. It became very complicated and ultimately VisCorp cared more about its short term share price and completely abandoned the entire set-top box strategy. We were never reimbursed these funds, although we did win a legal settlement against VisCorp later (the legal issues at the time prevented us from coming public with the details). Petro worked with us and we worked hard together to sell the Amiga inventory (which reduced the transaction cost, but could not be used to pay personnel costs). In the end the VisCorp board decided not to complete the transaction and we resigned. Petro went on to Gateway; VisCorp died eventually.
We are sure that Petro will admit that without our money at the time both he personally, and Amiga itself as a complete package (the intellectual property and the significant inventory of A1200s and components), would have had a very hard time surviving. Mr. Hembach, the bankruptcy trustee, wanted to sell everything any way he could. He would have split the intellectual property into pieces and this would have made future success for Amiga impossible. Petro gets the credit for convincing Mr. Hembach to keep the package together. Helmut Jost also deserves some credit too as he was the last CEO of Escom and was retained by Mr. Hembach to assist him, while Petro kept the sales channels open and "Amiga" alive. Perhaps, it is finally time for that information to be better known. "
