After a year of investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and PACEDM.com, Hakkasan Group CEO Neil Moffitt will be resigned – as we predicted a YEAR AGO.
Rumors are that MGM had had serious issues with the money laundering claims and the continued investigation into the former Chairman of Hakkasan, Khadem Al Qubaisi, who was arrested in connection with Abu Dhabi authorities’ investigation into the scandal involving the 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB. This last year, Qubaisi’s assets were frozen and he was told he could not leave the United Arab Emirates.
An article from last September in Malaysian investigative publication Sawarak Report – whose incisive exposés have prompted officials of numerous countries to officially investigate various matters – first connected Al-Qubaisi to funds that had gone missing from accounts belonging to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). 1MDB is a government-owned strategic development company that puts taxes and investment capital towards initiatives intended to stimulate the Malaysian economy.”
According to the documents, Attorneys at Greenberg Traurig assisted in a transfer of money, when funds were taken from a company already named in the criminal investigation for money laundering then transferred into the GT Law Bank Account, then transferred to Hakkasan as part of the purchase of the company’s stock. Specifically, one document showed that Vasco Investment Services SA, on Oct 2, 2012, transferred US$10 million (RM40 million) to Tasameem Real Estate LLC, which is the owner of Hakkasan. Vasco Investment Services SA, owned by United Arab Emirate’s tycoon Khadem al-Qubaisi, was named in the US Department of Justice (DOJ) court filings as a beneficiary of 1MDB funds allegedly misappropriated during the Aabar BVI (Genting/Tanjong) phase.
The involvement of Sullivan in his capacity as a representative of Hakkasan in the purchase of his IPIC boss’s New York flat with money acquired from 1MDB is symptomatic of the close knit web of operations between KAQ related companies, which were all run by the same handful of key operators.
These were in particular Sullivan himself; Hakkasan’s CEO, Neil Moffitt, and Marc Ambroisien, then CEO of Edmond de Rothschild Bank in Luxembourg (BPERE), the manager who had originally agreed to accept the suspicious payments from 1MDB.
