KEVIN MAXWELL, the youngest son of the disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell, was given 45 days yesterday to find £1 million and avoid being made bankrupt for the second time in 12 years.

Mr Maxwell, 45, appeared at Oxford County Court to answer a petition brought by a company called Global Investments over an unpaid debt said to run to £1 million, although none of the parties would give a figure.

Neville Catton, for Mr Maxwell, told District Judge Michael Payne that Mr Maxwell had agreed to release an asset in order to pay the debt in full. The agreement satisfied both parties.

The judge said that if the amount was not paid within the designated time limit, Mr Maxwell would have to return to court and the petition for his bankruptcy would go ahead. He said: “There will be no further adjournments after the 45 days as this matter has gone on rather longer than it should have done. If the sums have not been paid, I expect the petition to go ahead.”

Mr Maxwell agreed to pay costs. He spent the morning in the court reception area speaking in French on his mobile phone.

Speaking after the hearing, Mr Maxwell said that the debt did not relate to his telecoms company Telemonde. He said: “This is a matter that relates to corporate obligations which I had guaranteed. The matter has been sorted out between the companies in a formal way as you heard in court. It does not relate to Telemonde. I do not expect to be reappearing here. I’m just glad it has been resolved.”

Mr Maxwell and his brother Ian battled to save the Maxwell empire after their father’s mysterious death in November 1991. Robert Maxwell was found drowned after apparently falling off his yacht while on a cruise off the Canary Islands. Investigators subsequently uncovered a £460 million “black hole” in the Mirror Group pension fund.

Kevin and Ian Maxwell were directors of Maxwell Communication Corporation (MCC), the Maxwell master company, and had signed incriminating documents. The brothers went on trial in 1995 accused of defrauding Mirror Group pensioners of more than £120 million.

Earlier, Kevin had become Britain’s biggest-ever bankrupt, with debts of more than £400 million.

After his trial, Mr Maxwell promised to try to compensate the victims of his father’s plundered pension funds. He said he felt he had a “moral burden” to compensate the victims of the financial catastrophe, adding: “The moral burden that I bear, I will bear for the rest of my life . . . obviously I hope that in the future I may be in a position to do something.”

Mr Maxwell was only 33 when he was made bankrupt in 1992, several months after Robert Maxwell’s death. At the time, he described being made bankrupt as “a very public humbling”, adding: “If there is a redeeming feature of the bankruptcy order, it is perhaps that the thousands of people who have suffered loss can take real satisfaction from seeing a former director and I suppose, above all, a Maxwell suffer the consequences of their loss personally and in public.”

Mr Maxwell was discharged from bankrupty in 1995.

After the fraud trial, Mr Maxwell set about rebuilding his business career while fending off questions from Department of Trade and Industry inspectors, who in 2001 published a damning report into the Mirror Group flotation. He in turn attacked the DTI analysis as “incomplete” and said it had ignored evidence from the Maxwell trial.

Telemonde, which trades transatlantic telecoms capacity, soared on the back of the dot-com boom, briefly making a paper millionaire of Mr Maxwell. But its stock market value plummeted and the business is thought to be dormant.

Mr Maxwell has relied on friends and family for financial support.

New legislation introduced this year has removed some of the stigma attached to bankruptcy, but it is still best avoided. Bankruptcy allows creditors to force an orderly sale of assets such as homes or computers to recover some of their debt. Someone who has been made bankrupt has to hand over bank statements and credit cards. They are allowed to hang on to clothing, bedding and other basic household items.

Earlier, photographers who assembled at Mr Maxwell’s home in Moulsford, near Wallingford, where he lives with his wife Pandora and their seven children, encountered a film crew filming at the property. The house is apparently being used for the ITV series Midsomer Murders.

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