The way I understood this, and I’m probably wrong; is that the Hughes estate was owed $200 million dollars. They said “We will give you $100,000 off your debt in exchange for the land; AND you owe us the rest of the money still” So Hughes estate bought the land in exchange for writing off a PORTION ($100,000) of the debt. Now the Hughes estate OWNS the land is still OWED everything but $100,000 on the original debt. Since they were the ones originally owed the money; they were able to put in an offer of “credit towards the debt owed, in part”.
IF anyone else had come forward and put in that bid they would own the land and owe the debt. Now Hughes owns the land, still owns most of the debt due to it; and can resell either!
I read it differently. The original creditor just got a supposedly-worth $1bn property for $200,100,000. Nobody else wanted to bid on it, so it clearly isn’t worth $1bn. Or shenanigans were played to make sure nobody else knew about it and someone who would have been interested would not have known about it.
Creditor was owed $200 million for the property. Owner is forced to sell. Land goes up for auction. Any money bid, less auction fees, goes to the Creditor.
Creditor bids $100k, probably to cover auction fees. No one else put in a bid because Creditor can just keep increasing their bid up to the $200 million owed (they essentially get it back, so it a wash to them).
Effectively, the land was sold for $200 million. Nobody thinks it’s worth that much, not even the Creditor. But the must feel it’s worth more holding onto than what it would bring at auction.
