Il Gazzetino reveals sale of property connected to the Boraso scandal in March of this year. Brugnaro and Ching deny charges of corruption – Boraso denies asking for 70k Euro bribe.
VENICE – Investor Ching Chiat Kwong is leaving Venice. The Singaporean tycoon has sold Palazzo Donà and would also like to sell Palazzo Poerio Papadopoli. The hotel in campo Santa Maria Formosa was purchased by real estate fund Blue SGR for 18 million euro, while the building in Fondamenta Condulmer is still on the market. There is bitterness at the origin of this turning point, not so much for the corruption investigation in which the tycoon is a suspect, (a charge which is has also been firmly rejected by his defense in relation to the Pili area) but above all for the controversies that have marked his investments in the city for years now, and especially in recent months.
THE HOTEL
According to what il Gazzettino found, the sale of Palazzo Donà by Grandeur Oxley, a company that was specifically set up by Ching for the purchase of the property and its transformation into a hotel, took place in early March. In 2016, the Palazzo was sold to the subsidiary IVe by the Municipality for 4 million Euro, after which, following a public notice with a starting price of 6,742,000 euros, it was sold to Ching’s company for 7.1 million. In addition to the sale price, the Singaporean spent another 6.2 million on the restoration work, a massive intervention that was slowed down partly by Covid and partly by a dispute with entrepreneur Claudio Vanin (who was later to become the main accuser in the Palude investigation). Towards the end of 2022 the prestigious 5-star Palazzo Maria Formosa was opened, managed by the THE company led by the Calzavara family, who subsequently chose to renounce that activity.
THE CHANGE
In fact, everything has changed since then. Grandeur Oxley has decided to withdraw its investment. Since it is a listed complex, the Superintendency of Venice could have exercised the right of pre-emption to acquire it for public property, but the 60 days required by law have passed without this happening. The tenant at the time, THE, did the same, and in the meantime reached a severance agreement for the early termination of the 15-year plus 10-year rental contract. The property was then purchased by Blue Sgr, an asset management company based in Milan that specializes in the structuring and administration of real estate investment funds and credit. The corporation led by Carlo Alessandro Puri Negri currently manages assets amounting to 2.2 billion, distributed across about twenty funds, including Lagune Pasithea (which is currently working on the hotel project at Tronchetto) and Flaminia Core (only subscribed by Cassa Nazionale del Notariato). The value of the Palazzo Donà sale evidently took into account the revaluation determined by the elegant redevelopment that was done there, which also included refined furnishings, driving the price up to 18 million. Now the Palazzo Maria Formosa hotel is managed by the Solido Hotels group of the D’Avanzo family.
THE FORMER POLICE COMMAND
However, Palazzo Papadopoli remains on the market. The former headquarters of the local police command was the subject of a public bid by the Municipality in 2017 and was definitively purchased in 2019 by Ching’s Fortune Oxley company, for 10.8 million Euros. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, this sale was made possible by an alleged bribe of 70,000 Euros that was paid to the then councilor Renato Boraso (a claim rejected by both suspects). Despite the rumors that have circulated in recent years about the desire to transform it into a hotel, the Asian tycoon is determined to get rid of this property too, which has also become a burden on a personal level. “Our client – says the Simonetti law firm, which also defends Ching’s Italian representative, Luis Lotti – decided some time ago to divest his activities in Venice, not because of the investigations, but due to the impossibility of managing investments in this city in the terms in which he is accustomed to doing in other situations around the world where he operates as an institutional investor”.
His parent company in Singapore (where it is listed on the stock exchange) has reiterated its total non-involvement in the accusations, in particular regarding the Pili affair. The latest communication in this sense specifically concerns the two buildings: “The real estate developer Oxley Holdings has clarified that no person has been arrested in relation to the purchase of Palazzo Donà and Palazzo Papadopoli in Venice by CEO Ching Chiat Kwong. Furthermore, Ching is not subject to any personal restriction in Italy, and no precautionary measures restricting his personal freedom have been requested by the public prosecutor or ordered by the Court of Venice against him”.
THE INVESTIGATION
Palazzo Donà is cited in the documentation from the investigation conducted by deputy prosecutors Federica Baccaglini and Roberto Terzo. However, unlike in the case of Palazzo Papadopoli, they specify: “It must be said immediately, with regard to the sale of Palazzo Donà, that the elements collected during the investigations are insufficient to constitute a crime. However, even with regard to the sale of the aforementioned building, anomalies emerged which deserve to be reported, and which help to understand the overall plan that the public administrators of the Municipality of Venice put forward with regard to the area called Pili. Discussions regarding Pili were closely related to the sale of the two buildings to the Singaporean tycoon”.
For a month now Ching has been determined to demonstrate that he is completely innocent of the accusations relating to Papadopoli and Pili. But in the meantime, it’s goodbye Venice.
THE DEBATE
The sale of the Palazzo Maria Formosa hotel for 18 million has reignited the debate about the investigations that recently rocked Ca’ Farsetti. For a month now, former councilor Renato Boraso has been in prison, while Mayor Luigi Brugnaro is under investigation, along with his trusted men Morris Ceron and Derek Donadini, as well as other public managers and a slew of entrepreneurs. Ching himself is also under the lens of the Prosecutor’s Office, as is his Italian representative, Luis Lotti. Opposition city councilor Marco Gasparinetti went on the attack: “And now it would be time for others to “withdraw from Venice”: for example, the one who sold him that building (for 7 million) in 2016, when it was the headquarters of the municipality’s social services”.
However, Brugnaro’s line remains the same one repeated in the council meeting on August 2: “Since I took office, I have given great importance to relationships with Italian and foreign investors, which can only be personal, to convince them to bet on our city.” The fuchsia leader explained that he met the tycoon and his collaborators twice “… to see what proposal they had prepared” concerning Pili, but “there were no conditions to continue” and “we parted on a cordial basis”.
THE MEETING
However, in parallel with the dispute that arose with Vanin, suspicions about Ching continued, until they shifted from the Municipality to the Prosecutor’s Office. Prosecutors Federica Baccaglini and Roberto Terzo wrote in their report about the first meeting between Ching and Brugnaro on April 24, 2016 in the town hall, during which they talked about Pili, but not only that: “Another interesting topic, collateral to the first, that developed during the summit was the proposal to Ching that he establish itself as a reliable interlocutor with the local community by making real estate investments in Venice through the purchase of two historic buildings, Palazzo Donà and Palazzo Poerio Papadopoli, both to be converted into accommodation facilities”. In minutes from the investigation from July 7, 2022, Angelica Bonsignori, a former collaborator of the magnate, said: “During this conversation we also talked about the fact that before starting with the acquisition of “Pili” it was necessary to make the Singaporean magnate known to the Venetian population by making real estate investments in two buildings that were to be transformed into hotels, which were Palazzo Donà and Palazzo Poerio Papadopoli. On this point, I remember that the mayor also instructed that we be accompanied to the sites to view them externally.”
In the interrogation of June 15, 2023, Lotti confirmed “a meeting in Venice in which he personally participated together with Ching”, when the two “were accompanied by motorboat to visit Palazzo Donà and Palazzo Poerio Papadopoli, as well as other areas the municipal administration considered important for possible redevelopment for public purposes”.
Source: Il Gazzetino
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