Call it grand theft hotel -- almost.
A Brooklyn man was arrested on Friday on charges that he fraudulently tried to claim ownership of the SoHo Grand Hotel, one of the premier inns in Lower Manhattan and the scene of oh-so-many gossip items about celebrities in illicit entanglements.
The man, Kouadio Kouassi, 46, filed a deed with the city showing himself as the hotel's owner, but it was not processed because it lacked the required signatures, officials said.
When Kouassi returned to see if he had been declared the rightful owner, a Department of Finance employee believed something suspicious was afoot and notified the city Department of Investigation.
Apparently undaunted and bent on claiming the prized property, Kouassi returned several more times to get his deed processed, officials said.
City investigators contacted the hotel's true owners, the Hartz Group, which said it had never heard of Kouassi and had no intention of giving him the hotel, valued at US$76 million, city records showed.
"We think that since we bought the land, built the hotel and have run it for 12 years that we actually own the hotel," said Ron Simoncini, a spokesman for Hartz. Simoncini eventually stopped laughing and added, "I guess we should take it as a compliment."
The hotel, on West Broadway just below Grand Street, has 363 guest rooms, including penthouse loft suites with private outdoor terraces, at nightly rates starting at US$399. In the rooms are iPods with Bose Sound Docks, lotions by Malin & Goetz and Frette bathrobes and bedding.
Kouassi was charged with attempted grand larceny and offering a false instrument for filing. Authorities said he was in custody on Friday night and had not yet hired a lawyer.
If convicted, he will face up to 15 years in jail.
"This defendant foolishly thought he had engineered a clever and brash ruse to gain ownership of a significant commercial property," said Rose Gill Hearn, the city investigations commissioner, in a statement.
"He may now find himself sleeping in less glamorous accommodations," he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema