Kevin Hall and Glenn Garvin look into the recent events and how they played out.
Seven years ago, when the skeleton of the building that was to be the Trump Ocean Club had risen only 62 of its planned 70 stories, one of the developers gestured to it grandly and boasted to a reporter from Time magazine: “When you think of Paris you think of the Eiffel Tower, and when you think of Panama, you are going to think of this building.”
That prophecy has at last been fulfilled, albeit in a manner quite unexpected. In a weird business coup that played out in full view of a wide-eyed world press earlier this month, President Trump’s signature overseas hotel was seized from him in a business coup plotted by a brash young kite-surfing financier based in Miami Beach.
Armed with a Panamanian court order and a band of workmen with crowbars, 39-year-old Orestes Fintiklis took over the hotel and had Trump’s name torn off the wall following 10 days of public confrontations and even shoving matches between rival squadrons of lawyers, security guards and corporate suits.
“Panama is a crazy place, and we’ve seen plenty of crazy things, but nothing like this, ever,” said a former senior official in the Panamanian government (who didn’t want to be identified: “Leave me out of this, far out of this.”) “An American president losing a hotel to some young guy nobody ever heard of, even in Panama, this is an amazing event.”