Likely Accounting trickery
Music
If the debt was owed to banks, then... heeee hee
I took a music business class and I vaguely remember this subject. I'm pretty sure dude was actually in the hole from frivolous spending, and also partially due to the way the music rights worked out.
He was also to only human know to have gone for nearly 2 months without any REM sleep
This is the most interested I've ever been in Michael Jackson.
That’s just because he was in an American hospital when he went.
I saw a documentary about him once where they showed him in a Las Vegas hotel. He decided he wanted to go shopping, so they took him to the fancy art store there. We're talking paintings that cost a couple million dollars each. He walked through the store and pointed at things he liked and his handlers bought everything for him. If that was an average day for him, then I'm not surprised he was heavily in debt. They had to close everything off just for him to go places, which I'm sure also costs a fortune. Fans would get a glimpse of him walking and break down into hysterics and tears. It was quite the spectacle.