because it's losing money and getting run down. There are also condo units and that association got rid of Trump Org's management a long time ago. I sure wouldn't care to live there. The hotel and most of the condor units are empty because they're being bought for money laundering by Russians and other criminal organizations, especially Colombian cartels.
South China Morning Post: By day it glints in the tropical sunshine, an apparently shining testament to the US president’s business savvy. But a curious thing happens at night. Many of the lights stay off. The restaurants are near deserted; the corridors silent. The skyscraper appears to be largely empty – a dark tower. ...
Many of those who bought the condos, it turns out, did so not to live there but allegedly to launder illicit money – Russian gangster money, drug cartel money, people-smuggling money. A joint Reuters – NBC News investigation published on Friday together with a report by the charity Global Witness said the skyscraper had ties to international organised crime.
Trump may not have intended to facilitate criminal activity but the Panama tower “aligned” his financial interests with crooks, said Global Witness. “What is clear is that proceeds from Colombian cartels’ narcotics trafficking were laundered through the Trump Ocean Club and that Donald Trump was one of the beneficiaries,” it said.
http://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/2120510/trumps-panama-tower-used-money-laundering-organised-crime-gangs
[bWaPo: ]Police, yelling, power turned off: Confrontation over Trump’s Panama hotel escalates
The majority owner of President Trump’s only hotel in Latin America abruptly ordered Trump employees out of the property on Thursday, ... This attempt at a takeover by Orestes Fintiklis — a Cypriot businessman based in Miami — marked a sharp escalation in his months-old effort to re-brand the Trump International Hotel Panama and replace the Trump Organization as its manager. Fintiklis blames Trump’s brand and Trump’s company for declining revenue and empty rooms.
... The Trump hotel in Panama is a “hotel condominium” — in essence, its hotel rooms are owned individually by investors, and the owners collectively contract with Trump to manage them. They said part of the problem was Trump’s unpopularity in Latin America. “It’s a bloodbath, basically. It’s a financial bloodbath,” Jeffrey Rabiea, a New York businessman who owns three hotel rooms in the Trump Panama hotel, said last month. “Nobody wants to go there. If you’ve got a Marriott and a Hyatt and a Trump, you’re not going to Trump.”
The Trump hotel in Panama is located in a soaring building shaped like a billowing sail. It also includes residential condominium units — which were also once managed by the Trump Organization. Those owners rebelled several years ago, and now the residential units are managed by another company.
Since President Trump won the 2016 election, his name has come off three of the Trump Organization’s luxury hotels. But none of those cases produced this kind of confrontation.
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