Writing in Hawai’i Investor in May 1989, Susan Essoyan said that Charles Chidiac, “despite his Hawai’i ties, remains something of a mystery here.” More than two years later, and notwithstanding the lengthy Land Use Commission hearings into Chidiac’s proposed Riviera Resort, information on Chidiac’s background is still spotty.
This much can be learned from the public record or other published information. Chidiac was born in Lebanon on December 25, 1937. His mother was a member of the politically influential Chamoun family; in the 1950s, her brother was for a time president of Lebanon. There being no one correct way of transliterating Arabic names into Romanized spellings, Chidiac seems to have used several Westernized versions of his name before settling on Chidiac about 10 years ago. Before that, he went by El Chidiac (“el” being the Arabic article “the”) for several years. According to subpoenae on file in federal district court in Honolulu, other variants have included Shediac and Shaydiac.
Chidiac’s first recorded appearance in Hawai’i occurred in the 1960s. In spring of 1963 and spring of 1964, he was enrolled at the University of Hawai’i. He was not awarded any degree from UH, but he did meet the woman who was to become his wife in this period. They have since divorced.
In the Hawai`i Investor article, Essoyan states that Chidiac returned to Lebanon, where, among other things, he established a company called Selco East, described as a “real estate development company.” According to lawyers in Atlanta and New York, Chidiac and Selco were sued in connection with Chidiac’s work as a manufacturer’s representative in the Middle East – not in relation to any real estate deals. Essoyan also mentions that Chidiac owned and operated “an engineering firm called Chidiac Sine and Associates,” which handled “design and construction management of three cultural centers in Saudi Arabia.” No evidence of Chidiac’s involvement in these ventures was presented to the Land Use Commission.
In 1975, Essoyan writes, Chidiac moved to London, where “he continued to consult for and represent international firms active in construction and power generation projects in the Middle East.” Chidiac told Essoyan that he returned to Hawai’i to pursue the Riviera project. In fact, public documents and other published information indicate Chidiac’s business dealings in the state predate by several years his acquisition of the Ka’u land in 1980.
For example, a civil lawsuit filed in state circuit court accused Chidiac (known then as Charles El Chidiac) and several others of slander, contractual interference, and other tortious acts. The suit claimed that in 1978, Chidiac, several of his partners in a Bermuda-based entity called Deonne, Ltd., and a number of other parties tried to interfere with the planned sale of TraveLodge hotels in Hawai’i to Continental Properties, Inc., and to acquire at least one of the hotels (the one in Waikiki) for themselves or their associates. To this end, court papers say, Chidiac and others, including his father-in-law at the time, Jack A. Eagle, told officers and directors of TraveLodge that Continental lacked the financial capability needed to complete the planned transaction.
Court filings on behalf of Continental indicate that Chidiac and his co-defendants were suspected of having told TraveLodge officers, in an effort to acquire the Waikiki property for themselves, that they had close business and social ties with major TraveLodge shareholders, including Sir Charles Forte and Rocco Forte. The Fortes owned Trust Houses Forte, Ltd., of which TraveLodge was a subsidiary (The Fortes were based in London, where Chidiac was living at the time.)
Additionally, Continental’s suit alleged that the defendants, including Chidiac, promised to pay “with money from offshore corporations” in order to induce several people to get TraveLodge to cancel the agreement of sale with Continental and enter into a contract with the defendants.
The lawyers representing Continental dropped the charges against Chidiac and other Deonne principals in July 1980, owing to a number of difficulties, many of which may be attributed to the international nature of the case. (Among them, Chidiac claimed someone forged his signature on receipts of official services of process mailed to him in London; the service of process on Deonne was challenged as having been accepted by an unauthorized party.) In any event, ongoing efforts to settle out of court bore fruit in January 1981.
Chidiac is mentioned also in The Crimes of Patriots, a book on the collapse of the CIA-linked Nugan-Hand Bank of Australia. Officers of Nugan-Hand were apparently trying to “unload large amounts of Iranian currency” around the time of the shah’s fall from power, writes author Jonathan Kwitny. In this connection, Kwitny cites a telex dated June 22, 1979, from General Edwin F. Black (since deceased), to officers of Nugan Hand. Black, Kwitny writes, informed them that there would be a “special dinner” at his house in Honolulu the next day “for Charles El Chidiac, a Middle Eastern financier, ‘and Gen. Moinxadeh, senior member Shah’s staff.'”
Volume 2, Number 1 July 1991
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