Trump business fighting eviction from hotel tower
PANAMA CITY — One of President Trump’s family businesses is battling an effort to evict its team of executives from a luxury hotel in Panama City where they manage operations, and police have been called to keep the peace, the Associated Press has learned.
Representatives of the hotel owners’ association formally sought to fire Trump’s management team Thursday by delivering termination notices at the Trump International Hotel and Tower, according to a Panamanian legal complaint filed by Orestes Fintiklis, who controls 202 of the property’s 369 hotel units.
Trump’s managers retreated behind the glass walls of an office where they were seen carrying files to an area where the sounds of a shredding machine could be heard, according to two witnesses aligned with the owners. The legal complaint also accused Trump’s team of improperly destroying documents.
The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity over concerns they would be drawn into a protracted legal fight.
Representatives of the Trump Organization declined to comment. Fintiklis did not respond to messages left by text or email.
On Friday night, lawyers, notaries and rival security personnel gathered at the hotel while talks were under way to prevent the conflict from deteriorating further.
The showdown is the newest low in a monthslong fight over control of the property. Last August, Fintiklis’s Miamibased Ithaca Capital Partners bought the 202 units in a fire sale from the property’s struggling developer. As part of the deal, Trump Hotels sought and received some assurances that Ithaca would not seek to act against its interests as hotel manager.
Relations quickly soured amid abysmal hotel occupancy numbers and allegations by Ithaca and other hotel unit owners of financial mismanagement or misconduct.