JFK Plaza Hotel Owners Leave Trail of Ruin Stretching to Lancaster, Penn.
By Dana Rubinstein May 18, 2010 7:03 pm
reprintsKronos Hotels, the hotel concern that so mismanaged the Crowne Plaza JFK that the InterContinental Hotels Group, the owner of the Crowne Plaza name, cut ties with the firm (the hotel has since been renamed JFK Plaza), hasn’t just wreaked havoc in Queens.
LancasterOnline.com has an in-depth story on Charles Morais and Sunil Mir, the duo behind Kronos Hotels, which came to own 36 properties, including a now-shuttered Holiday Inn in Lancaster, Penn.
Some interesting tidbits from LancasterOnline’s rundown of the Kronos follies:
The latest hit against Morais and Mir came in mid-April, when Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett charged them with owing $350,000 in back sales and retail taxes here.
But if Pennsylvania wants to get its money, it may have to take a number.
That’s because Morais and Mir already owe more than $2.5 million to two other states in which their chain operated.
In its March 2010 report of Top 250 delinquent taxpayers, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance lists Morais 66th ($1,000,009.96 owed) and Mir 67th ($979,873.08).
… Guests and workers at the JFK Plaza hotel near JFK airport in New York also want to speak with Morais and Mir.
… According to a report in Hotel Voice, a publication of the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, when the hotel closed, workers were owed more than $1 million in back wages and benefit-fund payments. The hotel owners, the Voice reports, had also been garnishing some employee paychecks for child support, but never passed the payments to the intended recipients.
Read the whole story here.
drubinstein@observer.com