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One of the top financial advisers overseeing Chrysler LLC’s restructuring testified in bankruptcy court Monday that there is a "low likelihood" that the automaker will be able to pay back its billions of dollars in government loans.

But Robert Manzo, an executive director with the restructuring group Capstone Advisory Group LLC, said he doesn’t view the government financing as "free money."

"They’re offering financing with a low likelihood of being repaid," he said.

Under a plan announced Thursday for Chrysler to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and partner with Italian automaker Fiat Group SpA, the government agreed to provide $8 billion on top of the $4 billion Chrysler has received since January.

Earlier in Monday’s hearing, Judge Arthur Gonzalez postponed his decision on whether Chrysler can start the process of selling its most valuable assets to a new company partnered with Fiat. The minivan and pickup plants in Fenton, among others, are excluded from the list of assets the Fiat-affiliated company will buy and take out of bankruptcy, Chrysler said in a bankruptcy document Sunday.

Gonzalez delayed the issue until Tuesday afternoon after attorneys for a dissident group of Chrysler’s lenders objected to taking up the issue because it needed more time to review the proposed deal.

The St. Louis South assembly minivan plant, idled in October, and St. Louis North Assembly pickup plant are among those scheduled to be sold or closed by December 2010.

Many details about the future of the plants still were unknown on Monday. But as the automaker continued through bankruptcy court, it idled all of its facilities — including the Fenton pickup plant — starting Monday same day cash advance. Chrysler has said its plants will restart once it emerges from bankruptcy.

In Fenton, the idling forced 1,000 hourly workers into layoff status. Chrysler executives said last week that those workers will get supplemental unemployment benefit pay.

Salaried employees at the Fenton plant are still working, Chrysler spokeswoman Dianna Gutierrez said. But she could not say whether those employees also will be laid off.

Meanwhile, the dissident group of Chrysler’s lenders has refused to go along with the restructuring plan. A lawyer for some of the creditors, Tom Lauria, said they have not had time to review Chrysler’s 300-page filing.

Lauria also objected to a Chrysler motion to allow the automaker to pay taxes, and he indicated that he also would object to the payment of other costs and expenses. He said if the sale to Fiat fails to go through, any money spent would be taking away from what’s left for the lenders later.

This group of lenders argued, in a filing Monday, that Chrysler is unfairly putting unsecured lenders like union employees above secured creditors.

Also Monday, Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers union, said the union has no intention of keeping its 55 percent stake in the new Chrysler and will sell the shares as soon as possible to fund a trust that will take over retiree health care costs next year.

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