The Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment appears to be owned by a former Iraqi politician who moved money out of the country while U.S. aid poured in. Even the law firm from The Paradise Papers wasn’t willing to work with him moving $140 million out of Iraq.
Meanwhile another London Hyatt Regency, Hyatt Regency The Churchill, appears to be owned by… the President of Pakistan?
Hyatt Regency The Churchill
Asif Ali Zardari is President of Pakistan. He served in the same role from 2008 to 2013. He was married to the late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and allegations about his corruption brought down her first time in that role. He was indicted for the assassination of Bhutto’s brother, and arrested while trying to flee for Dubai. Zardari was elected President and acquitted – and became the first Pakistani President to ever complete a full term in office in 2013.
Dubbed “Mr. Ten Percent” he was accused of using his wife’s position to charge 10% commission brokering projects and loans. Thirty four years ago he was arrested in a kidnapping and extortion scheme that apparently included tying a bomb to the leg of a British businessman, though he was ultimately acquitted on those charges and also bank fraud.
By the late 90’s $100 million of an alleged $1.5 billion in kickbacks had been traced. Five years later they were sentenced in Switzerland and forced to return $11 million to the government of Pakistan. He may have served as bagman for Saddam Hussein.
Hyatt Regency The Churchill
I struggle with how to internalize this knowledge into my stay decisions. I was already less inclined to return to the property since they’ve become stingier with elite breakfast.
Would ownership of the property influence your decision to stay or not stay? Would the details of who seems to own this property in particular dissuade you from staying there?
Ownership structures are frequently obscured, including in this case, and especially in certain places like London. If you chose not to stay here, how much due diligence would you do on alternate lodging?
How did Hyatt allow this? Don’t they have internal compliance protocols, including under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?
I’ve stayed at Hilton Park Lane because relatively inexpensive , and a good location ..
London has many dubious characters .
I used to stay at the Churchill in its heyday with a wonderful Regency Club. 5 years ago we were awakened by water pouring through our bathroom ceiling at 2.00 am; the hotel wouldn’t give us another room. Since then I have been staying at the Andaz (actually more convenient – next to Liverpool St. Station and the Elizabeth Line). Wonderful friendly staff. I have stayed a couple of times at the Albert Embankment as well – bit inconveniently located but have had great suites, good breakfast and friendly staff.
Please don’t reveal The Goring, The Stafford, Dukes, The Lanesborough, The Connaught, Claridge’s, or The Dorchester are also owned by shady characters!! 🙂
Not a surprise that “compliance” can, with some enterprises, become more “compliant” with the application of large sums of $$$$$$$!
It’s a bit like enjoying a product, a good ice cream, TV series or whatever, and then tracing back the corporate ownership to a tobacco company or multinational with serious allegations of terrible corruption, child labor or support for extremist politicians or outright dictators. At what point does one draw the line? Given the interconnections of so many things today if you have reasonably high moral standards it is hard to find products that aren’t in some way tainted. (And that’s not even getting into environmental issues.) Living in the modern world I have no answer for this, except to be aware of it and then decide how far you will go.
I was paid 10% to stay there by a Pakistan charity. They also contributed 10% to children’s charities.
Hyatt is owned by Hamas sympathizers
I believe they have restored breakfast in the restaurant per flyertalk
@drrichard … the answer is to buy products endorsed by Greta Thunberg or RFK, Jr . They have saved humanity from the climate , no ?
It’s easy. Hyatt itself is owned by JB Pritzker’s family so I don’t stay at that brand.
London has and always be the capital of dirty money! Even the new law they passed still haven’t cleaned up the place.
The UK only recently changed rules that enabled disclosure of the true owners of properties. But even then, compliance isn’t great because no one is really getting prosecuted. There is a reason why money robbers around the world usually run to London, because they own UK politicians. And billionaires own London – Qataris own Mayfair, Chelsea is with the Russians, Knightsbridge is with the Saudi and UAE folks, and so on. Plus there is the convenient non domicile tax regulation where anyone claiming “foreign domicile” even when living in the UK pays no taxes on non UK income for 7 years and a flat fee after that, irrespective of the actual income. A key beneficiary until now has been the Prime Minister’s wife.
So corrupt foreign politicians owning these hotels is hardly a surprise.
I live in London, by the way.
@Rozellev … you might add a few more notorious cities to your comment : virtually any city which has politicians , bureaucrats , lawyers and assorted schemers .
I couldn’t care less. Satan himself could own it and I would stay there. Those that want to virtue signal by only buying products or services from certain companies/individuals are the fools. You have zero idea about anyone’s beliefs or practices. I mean how long was Bill Cosby considered own of top comedians and America’s Dad.
Get over yourselves. Make whatever decision you want but either trying to force that viewpoint on others or being shocked when someone is exposed for what they truly are just makes you the fool.
@John Smith: “Hyatt is owned by Hamas sympathizers.”
The Pritzker family is Jewish. It’s more likely that you are a Hamas sympathizer.
Stayed at the Hyatt Regency Blackfriars twice in the past 9 months. Loved it.
The Lanesborough is owned by the Sultan of Brunei, who has pressed for capital punishment for gay people. Sorry. I’m not
Gay, but won’t enrich the guy. Plenty of other hotels in London, and in Los Angeles. I won’t even buy a Coke from the bigot.
– At least those hotels are not owned by Putin or his oligarchs. At the end business is business and both Hyatt properties in question are quite good, at least in my opinion. In the past, a CA teachers retirement had an ownership of St. Regis Princeville, HI. The ownership did not make it better and the hotel was eventually sold, left the Marriott portfolio (which is sad) and is now one of the properties of 1Hotel.com
Am literally at the Hyatt Regency Blackfriars right now and about to have a complimentary elite breakfast.
Notwithstanding the headline, unclear as to who owns this hotel. Decent location and nice rooms.
@DaninMCI – I’m not a Mormon like you but I’ll still stay at Marriott hotels. Involving yourself in petty considerations about the religion or politics of someone else is a heavy burden. You’re not going to change anything but hey, you do you.
The Zardari family was quite wealthy even before he married Benazir Bhutto, but being wealthy doesn’t stop the greedy from being greedy and so corruption was part and parcel of the picture when he got the opportunity. But what’s the most corrupt part of the Pakistani government? The Sunni Muslim
Punjabi-dominated military which is the country’s puppet master and has long hated the Shia Sindhi Bhutto family and done the Saudi’s bidding.
Maybe someone should start a blog site with hotel recommendations based on the political disposition of the property owners. But since most people really don’t care or have the time and inclination to boycott based on hotel ownership — which is often anything but transparent if wanting to get to the true beneficial owners upon a piercing of the corporate veils — hotel location, hotel branding and quality of the hotel plant and value for money seems to matter the most to consumers.
There are a lot of questionable parties that have a lot of money and are invested in a lot of the supply side of the goods and services we purchase and then take that money which they get from consumers and use it against the consumers and public at large so as to suit their own narrow interests regardless of the adverse impact on the public at large.
Let it go. The corruption you think you know about is a speck relative to the sum total. Fretting over such things is bad only for the person doing the fretting, no one else. Remember this: if you can be predicted, you can be controlled.
The Churchill was owned by the Qatari state – not like them to be sellers of prime London sites.
I stayed at a Trump hotel.
I am always shocked at the owners of London hotels. A significant number are owned by foreign entities, many a bit shady. The bottom line is that the UK economy is smaller than that of Mississippi. You need to get money from somewhere.
@Dom– It has been widely reported that the Pritzkers has funded the pro-Hamas college encampments. So if they’re Jews, they’re foolish Jews. If I thought my stays there were profitable for them, I’d probably stay elsewhere.
@Freddo
Thank you!
Sometimes the ruling establishment players of a GCC country will sell an asset/asset stake at a tremendous discount (or even as a gift) to foreign political figures as part of an influence-peddling strategy or to annoy the ruling establishment in a country or other countries. Despite being a Sunni-led country, Qatar had a beef with the Sunni-dominated Pakistani military that has long been in bed with the Saudis and Emiratis and those the Saudis and Emiratis back in the Middle East and North Africa. If Qatar did “gift” or discount sale the Churchill to Pakistani ownership as suggested in this blog piece, then perhaps that or an “old debt” explains it.
The UK economy is not smaller than the economy of Mississippi. Where do people come up with such twisted claims.
Mississippi is still racked with a lot of poverty and low-income- employees and the state’s population is substantially smaller than the UK’s population and on average economically worse off than the average Brit living in the UK.
When people obsessed with calling American anti-war and pro-Palestinian rights protesters in the aggregate “pro-Hamas”, those people are categorizing the majority of Americans between the age of 18 years and 40 years of age as being “pro-terrorists”. It is absurd to call such “pro-Palestinian” protesters as “pro-Hamas”, but perhaps that deliberate confusing of “Hamas” and “Palestinian” explains the spin in calling Israel’s barbaric reaction to Hamas’s October 2003 barbaric incursion the “Israel-Hamas war” when it really has turned out to be an “Israeli war on Palestinians” or an “Israeli-Palestinian” war since then.
@Dom; @Chopsticks
“The Pritzker family is Jewish.”
They are JINOs. Jewish In Name Only.
Btw- I was in Londonstan 8/2023.
Welcome to the real “Wrath of Khan.”
@GUWonder. 1. Hamas invades Israel, kills 1200 (at least), takes over 200 hostages and retreats to tunnels in Gaza underneath hospitals, schools, etc. They are deeply embedded in population centers.
2. Should Israel have simply looked at that and said, “okay. Too many people there. We have to let them get away with it.”? Would any country do that? Did the US do it in WW II? Would any country’s population accept that non-response? What friggin choice did Israel have.
3. If the Germans had surrendered earlier, there would have been no Dresden. If the Japanese had surrendered earlier, there would have been neither Hiroshima or Nagasaki. So whose fault is that? Please tell me.
4. While everyone is` talking about Israel’s next move into Rafah, i hear no one suggesting that the tragedy could be over if Hamas would surrender now and free the hostages. When I was in Israel in February, I met with a leader who asked our group to pray for his son who was taken hostage in October. About a month ago, he found out his son has been dead since that day, that Hamas is holding his body hoping to be able to trade his body for convicted terrorists. This is who you are defending.
5. The death of non-combatant woman and children is a pure tragedy. But if you read this far, whose fault is it? It could be over tomorrow. But all those who protest against Israel now are content for Hamas to survive and rule Gaza again. Won’t happen – no matter who is the Israelli PM.
As “no war is a bad war” — when it’s American-paid weapons being used — US Senator Lindsey Graham recently said without grasping what he was really telling everyone about Israel’s retaliatory war on Gaza after Hamas’s barbaric incursion in October: “This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki on steroids”. Nuking Gaza doesn’t really work for Israel’s interests, but that Sen. Graham statement speaks to the tactical depravity of what has been done by Israel even without having (yet) gone nuclear in waging war. But as it is being fought, the greatest threat to the lives and release of the remaining living hostages in the hands of Hamas (and probably also still some other groups) is the war being waged Netanyahu style.
The rules of war applicable under international law nowadays are rules that came about as a result of the Holocaust and World War 2 — keep in mind that “never again” thing does really matter to some of us and should be applied for the benefit of all humanity regardless of identity politics. In the regard, Israel and Hamas are both deserving to be tried for war crimes under the rules of international law as applicable currently. I won’t shed a tear to see Netanyahu and Hamas indicted for war crimes. It’s overdue at this point.
The only thing you left out was saying what you think Israel should have done. There were no good solutions – just bad and worse. But in the end, Hamas, who started this terror, must be eliminated. And Graham has been a big defender.
“This is who you are defending.” That is a line of rubbish, and your credibility got shot by trying to paint me as a defender of Hamas. I am an equal opportunity critic of bad actors for bad behavior, and Hamas is an awful actor and deserves to rot. And so does the Netanyahu regime — a regime that freaked out very recently when Hamas suddenly and surprisingly turned around and agreed to accept what Blinken termed as Israel’s “extremely generous offer” for a deal. There is a reason why Egypt’s American-Israeli patsy in charge of Egypt is only now threatening to join the South African cause in an ICC prosecution of Israel under the Netanyahu regime: Netanyahu doesn’t want a deal that keeps most of Gaza’s Palestinians in most all of Gaza, and he doesn’t want to become the homeland of Gaza’s Palestinians.
Even if Hamas suddenly had a change of heart and decided to repent for its horrible doings and freed all the remaining living hostages and the remains of the dead ones being kept by them and wipe themselves out on condition of everyone agreeing to a two-state Israel+Palestine outcome sooner than later, Israeli society is so far right and otherwise understandably enraged that there wouldn’t be a two-state deal implemented even if there were such a “change of heart” and “deal”.
So this is shady because it’s Arabs owning them? But many of you are willing to stay at Trump hotels?
Or hotels owned by much more evil corporations than some has-been Iraqi politician? What if known war criminal Dick Cheney owned a hotel?
This is why FlyerTalk has a politics/no politics rule. So I can read about travel without having to interact with people’s ignorant personal opinions.
As a proud, patriotic American I would never stay at any hotel owned by Donald J. Trump who blatantly and embarrassingly attempted to overthrow our government on January 6, 2021. Hopefully, all of his hotels will end up in bankruptcy just like all his other dubious business ventures.
@drrichard Absolutely correct. If you unearthed all the ownership and connections, you would not buy anything or go anywhere. To difficult. Yes, everybody has their own line. It’s a complex world.