In the [url=/members_archives/archives1991.php]June and July issues of 1991[/url] (scroll down to see the article’s listings on the link), Environment Hawai`i considered plans for and feasibility of the super-luxury Hawaiian Riviera Resort proposed for Ka`u by one Charles Chidiac. There have been further developments in the case and additional information obtained with regard to Chidiac. Here is a summary:
Poor Lawyers
As was disclosed in the July Environment Hawai`i, Chidiac has received loans totaling more than $45 million from a network of foreign banks, with the collateral for each loan being the land he owns in Ka’u. This is in addition to almost $40 million that he owes his former partners in the resort venture since purchasing most of their stake in the land in August 1990. Again, security for the promissory notes he gave his partners was the land.
That same real estate is now further burdened with a lien placed against it by several attorneys who aided Chidiac in his successful efforts to win Land Use Commission approval of his resort. (At its meeting May 14, the commission allowed Chidiac’s land to be placed in the urban district.) Rather than pay legal fees to George K. Lindsey, Jr., and to the law firm of Moon, O’Connor, Tam & Yuen, Chidiac has given them a mortgage. Bill Yuen, a partner in the law firm, is a former LUC chairman. He did not argue Chidiac’s case to the commission directly, but he did appear at commission hearings and aided in the presentation of Chidiac’s case. Many people who followed the proceedings closely believe Yuen’s presence at hearings and behind-the-scenes lobbying helped win over LUC Chairman Renton Nip.
The amount of money owed by Chidiac to Lindsey and to Yuen’s law firm is not given in the document filed with the Bureau of Conveyances. The mortgage does state, however, that the lawyers’ claims are subordinate to previous claims totaling roughly $90 million. Chidiac signed the mortgage January 23, 1991. It was not filed with the Bureau of Conveyances until June 24, 1991.
To the Court
Two of the interveners in the LUC hearings who are opposed to the resort have appealed the commissions decision in state circuit court in Hilo. The Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation has appealed on behalf of Pa’a Pono Miloli’i, while Glen Winterbottom has appealed on his own behalf.
Among other issues, the NHLC appeal raises the point that state law requires the commission to issue a final decision and order within 120 days of the end of hearings in any given case. The decision and order issued by the commission on June 4, 1991, does not satisfy this requirement, NHLC attorneys state. Far from it being a final document, it is contingent upon Chidiac’s Palace Development Corporation providing additional information – information, the attorneys note, that should have been furnished prior to the commissions decision.
Meanwhile, in London
Following publication of the July issue, a reader has submitted further information on Chidiac’s activities abroad, as reported by the Financial Times of London. In its editions of February 20, 1990, the newspaper reported that a Tory Minister of parliament, one John Browne, was found guilty by a House of Commons committee of having failed to disclose his business interests – specifically, his business interests in a firm controlled by Chidiac. Quoting from the Times:
“An all-party committee of MPs said that action should be taken against Mr. Browne for failing to register his interest ‘In a firm of Lebanese middlemen controlled by Mr. Charles Chidiac, whilst lobbying Ministers and officials on their behalf and on the behalf of their own clients.’ His ‘undisclosed pecuniary interest’ in carrying out this lobbying was particularly serious, the committee said.”
Browne was also judged to have erred in not disclosing an $88,000 payment from Saudi Arabia, as well as having failed to disclose his relationship with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, Saudi Arabia’s central bank.
Volume 2, Number 2 August 1991
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