Difference between revisions of "Alberto Vilar"

Revision as of 03:53, 30 September 2019

• Alberto Vilar was a wealthy investor in early internet companies who financed lawsuits that unsuccessfully tried to block Trump's construction of the Trump International Hotel and Tower near the United Nations. “The musical education of Alberto Vilar started when he first heard a violin back in his homeland of Cuba. […] What Vilar has become, as he has grown rich from early investments in Internet stocks, is the go-to patron of the arts. […] Vilar began his career in finance in 1964 with Citicorp, right in the Park Avenue building where his own offices now take up a floor. In 1980 he and a partner started his company and soon they were early investors in Microsoft, Oracle, America Online, Cisco, eBay and Yahoo! The age of the Internet was dawning. When those companies took off, Vilar became rich. […] He has a 32-room triplex near the United Nations building, filled with art, including statues of Mozart. […] And when the titan real estate developer Donald Trump was building a 72-story tower that blocked his view, Vilar financed the legal battle to stop it. He lost. “(Washington Post, April 1, 2001)
• Donald Trump later expressed sympathy for Vilar, calling it "terrible" when he was indicted for defrauding an investor out of $5 million. “When Alberto Vilar attended the opera at the Met -- which he did a few dozen times a year -- he nearly always sat by himself. But the man never seemed quite as alone as he did yesterday, seated by his lawyer in a Manhattan courtroom and fighting to get out of jail. Vilar, once a stock-market superstar and a spectacularly generous donor to the Kennedy Center and the Washington Opera, among many arts organizations around the world, could have used some wealthy friends. But none were around yesterday as his lawyer tried to free him from his cell in the Metropolitan Correction Center, where he's bunked since his arrest last week for allegedly bilking an investment client out of $5 million. […]Strange but true, you have to go to Vilar's enemies these days to find someone who'll say he's getting the shaft. ‘He's a miserable human being and a basic scumbag,’ said Donald Trump yesterday. ‘He spent $2 million trying to fight me when I wanted to build the Trump World Towers’ because it obstructed the view from Vilar's apartment at United Nations Plaza. ‘He was intractable and foolish and he ended up getting his [butt] kicked by me.’ Trump means that the towers were built. “But he gave millions to charities and they've treated him like garbage,’ he adds. ‘I think that's terrible. The least they could say is thank you.’” (Washington Post, June 4, 2005)