You also need to understand what this means:
In my understanding American Express will not allow you to open another account, or even to hold a supplementary card on someone else's account, unless you repay the amount they wrote off. There hasn't been any recent discussion, policies do change, and exceptions may happen, but that has been their practice.
Last year and this year, I saw some people qualify for Amex Platinum cards after they had defaulted and left unsettled debts on an Amex card at some point in the late 1990s. So it does still happen.