Dutch millionaire impresario Joop van den Ende has liquidated his stake in the Living City property company because two of its directors are suspects in a real estate fraud investigation.
Dutch millionaire impresario Joop van den Ende has liquidated his stake in the Living City property company because two of its directors are suspects in a real estate fraud investigation.
Living City was created to combine the expertise of Van den Ende's company Stage Entertainment and Dutch real estate developer Trimp & Van Tartwijk to carry out urban development in the vicinity of new theatres. Living City's first undertaking was to be a 120,000 m2 project in the Zuidas business district in Amsterdam with a music theatre, hotel, office space and a parking garage. This was to be a crucial element in the redevelopment of the Zuidas from a purely office location into Zuidas Amsterdam Bright City (Zuidas ABC) with work, accommodation and leisure functions combined.
To achieve this goal, the district is being transformed to include apartments and a strong cultural element with shops, museums, theatres, restaurants, a central park. The implosion of Living City is a significant setback for the Zuidas planners.
The Living City cooperation started to unravel when raids were carried out by 600 officials from the Amsterdam prosecutors office on real estate businesses in November last year. Two directors of Trimp & Van Tartwijk, who are also directors of Living City, were arrested.
Van den Ende began reducing his stake in Living City but failed in his attempts to remove the two directors from their posts at Living City as neither have to date been charged with any crime.
The impresario told Dutch daily newspaper De Volkskrant that he did not want to offer his shares to Trimp & Van Tartwijk to avoid any involvement with the suspicions in regard to the fraud investigation. Van den Ende said his decision to liquidate the company was based on an internal investigation he commissioned. He was so shocked by the conclusions, he said, that he was subsequently brought to hospital with heart complaints.
Amsterdam City Council confirmed that the land purchase agreement with Living City for the Zuidas location had been scrapped. Van den Ende has indicated Stage Entertainment would continue to build theatres but would not get involved in other developments. 'I do not want to have anything to do with this world,' he said.
