Here we go: Found some details...
More than a dozen police wearing bulletproof vests entered the lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Panama on Monday morning and evicted the Trump Organization’s staff, a move that comes after weeks of simmering tensions over control of the property.
The Trump Organization manages the hotel in the 70-story tower overlooking the Punta Pacifica Peninsula and the new majority owner had gone to court in the U.S. and Panama to evict the company run by President Donald Trump’s sons. There were scuffles as police arrived to carry out the eviction, and Panamanian court officials were present...
The Trump Organization in court filings called the effort a “design to wrongfully seize control over the hotel property.”
“Rather than abide by the clear terms of the agreement he had signed, Mr. Fintiklis had been conspiring with others to remove Trump Hotels as manager and fire most, if not all, of its loyal and dedicated employees,” the Trump Organization said in a statement to the press. “Looking back, it is now apparent that Mr. Fintiklis, in flagrant violation of the commitments he had made, never had any intention of keeping his word and had been plotting a takeover and termination of Trump Hotels all along.”
Fintiklis has argued in documents filed in a U.S. court in Florida that the Trump Organization had mismanaged the property, causing occupancy levels “to collapse” and expenses to “bloat.”
“Operators gross incompetence and deficient sales organization stands in the way of [the] owner making any profit on its investment, all the while lining the [Trump Organization’s] pockets,” he alleged in a court filing.
Given trump's poor business history, I think Fintiklis is the more believable side of this fight.
There's been earlier reports that a lot of trump properties - save for the one in Washington DC where foreign agents book in order to curry favor with trump's administration - are going under because everyone else refuses to do business in those properties, use them for hotel stays, or any other activity.
I'm not surprised this is happening. I just hoped it was going to happen sooner.
A lot of places with trump's brand name all over it are going to be toxic, because nobody wants to get slimed by his toxic identity. We're going to see a lot of this kind of video clip via ABC News on Twitter:
OOOOOHHHHHHHHH THIS IS SOME TASTY TASTY SCHADENFREUDE.
In case of a trade war, I hope all the other nations do this to trump-owned properties.
1 comment:
Richard Engel recently did one of his "On Assignment" pieces about that place, and it would appear to be a hub of money laundering for cartels and Russian mobsters with very few of the units purchased actually occupied.
-Doug in Oakland
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