Desai’s wife meets with creditors about clinics’ finances

Speaking for her husband during a meeting with creditors Monday, Dr. Kusum Desai answered questions about the bankruptcies of the three clinics at the center of last year’s hepatitis outbreak.

In a soft voice that was sometimes drowned out by rumbling traffic on the street below, Desai divulged some financial details of the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada, the Gastroenterology Center of Nevada and the Desert Shadow Endoscopy Center, which filed for liquidation last month.

Her husband, Dipak Desai, ran the clinics until a July 2008 stroke left him incapacitated. In October, Kusum Desai became the sole administrator of the Endoscopy Center and the Gastroenterology Center.

At Monday’s meeting at the Foley Federal Building in downtown Las Vegas, Kusum Desai sat in her husband’s place and answered questions for more than two hours about the clinics' finances, documentation and other topics related to the bankruptcies.

She answered most questions. Sometimes she said she didn’t know the answer or said two former clinic employees, Tonya Rushing and Charlene Harrison, knew the answer because they handled the clinics’ day-to-day finances.

Lawyers were not allowed to ask about the Desais’ personal finances.

The meeting will resume Oct. 1 as trustee Brian Shapiro collects more information about the clinics’ assets.