Rumors about Neil Moffitt (founder of Hakkasan) and Hakkasan have been perpetuated by several websites recently. One of their alleged former investors and former Chairman of the Company (Khadem al Qubaisi, has been named in a money laundering investigation that has nothing to do with Hakkasan or its management. There is no suggestion or allegation that Hakkasan is or was involved in any way in money laundering or any other illegal activity. We want to set the record straight for Hakkasan and nothing in our prior story was intended to suggest they are anything other than a profitable, successful company.
We had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Moffitt about these issues and the future of the company.
First, getting to the rumors about Hakkasan and its relationship to Khadem al Qubaisi, the former Chairman of Hakkasan. What is his current involvement in Hakkasan, and is he involved at all with the company at this point?
Mr. Al-Qubaisi has resigned as Chairman of Hakkasan, and is no longer involved in the operation of the company.
Are you planning on staying with the company?
Yes, I have no intent of leaving Hakkasan Group, having first built Angel Management Group and now Hakkasan Group from the ground up in Las Vegas. Having false and troubling rumors spread about a company that employs 6000 people and is the most successful nightlife company in Las Vegas makes my job very challenging. Since my concern is my employees and their families, I will always do my best to rise above the nonsense and focus on our expanding markets and numerous future ventures. Hopefully, it will never come to light that our competitors spread these rumors because that would be disappointing and unfair to the hard working men and women of my company.
Hakkasan has made a lot of money, perhaps having the most successful nightclub in Las Vegas. What has the company been doing with the profits?
Our goal over the last two years has been to prepare our company for very aggressive international growth, and we are fortunate enough to have an ownership group that encouraged us to reinvest our profits into growing our infrastructure and executive team, in preparation for that expansion. At this time, we have more than 25 deals in some stage of development, and the team required to execute that volume of projects could only be built by investing heavily in overhead.
Wynn announced that they were moving away from big name DJs, and focusing on Ultraclubs. Victor Drais basically claimed this is the death of the Mega DJ. What are your thoughts about this?
I think this is complete nonsense, and it’s unfortunate that certain operators feel that in order to market an alternative concept, they need to profess the death of a competing genre of music. It’s often the case that dramatic, unsubstantiated proclamations grab more headline space than facts. As a company, we believe in diversity in our programming approach, and will continue to book ‘mega DJ’s’ as well as live acts, celebrity hosts and any other events that our customers tell us they’d like to see in our venues. We understand our business extremely well, and our booking decisions are driven by facts and data, not politics.
What would you like people to know most about Hakkasan as a company, and its employees and the services it provides?
Hakkasan Group is a top notch company that exemplifies integrity and hard work. Its employees and management have broken every record and ceiling in Las Vegas and beyond. We look forward to continuing our tradition of excellence in service and products.
Neil Moffit, through his attorney wanted to make clear of the following things:
– He personally is not involved in any investigation, nor is the target of any investigation.
– The company itself (Hakkasan) isn’t under investigation.
– Khadem al Qubaisi is no longer the chairman of the company or personally affiliated with the company at this time
– Moffit is not stepping down from Hakkasan and has no plan to.
– Hakkasan is “highly” profitable and needs no outside investment
We want to make clear that all allegations are nothing more than allegations.
NOT SO GOOD FOR KHADEM
Not so good news for Hakkasan’s Former Alleged Investor, who has been under a lot of scrutiny lately, and currently unsubstantiated* rumors flying left and right about the founder Neil Moffit leaving the company, to Federal Investigators looking into the company’s finances. However, today the rumors seem to have come to a head, with the FBI and Department of Justice and FBI issuing international warrants for people connected to the company through investments and possibly even management
Robin Leach even posted yesterday that there was going to be a major shakeup of the nightlife industry, with three execs stepping down.
While the story is complex is essentially about Billions of Dollars that were stolen from a Malaysian Development Fund. Investigators believe that the money was stolen by several individuals and then laundered through both real estate and corporate investments in the United States and other places.
One of those places, it is alleged, is through Hakkasan’s alleged former owner Khadem al Qubaisi.
A full account of how the money may have been laundered to Hakkasan can be found here.
BusinessInsider also notes that Neil Moffitt is trying to quickly get rid of one of the most expensive apartments in New York, by dropping the price almost 1/3. * Read Note.
According to the New York Post, this could be the world’s largest money laundering scandal, and has done an extensive profile of one of the people involved.
This comes only months after rumors that Hakkasan was trying to sell many of the assets that they bought, since their investors were no longer paying the bills. According to VegasTripping.com:
Rumors are swirling that Hakkasan is looking to divest itself from portions of their acquisition of The Light Group from Morgans Hotel Group. The original deal, which was announced in December 2014, outlined that Morgans would sell 90% of TLG assets to Hakkasan Group for $36 million smackers, a black 1976 Les Paul Custom three pickup, a future draft choice and a mustard-stained copy of Tim’s book. The deal was expected to close pretty quickly – January 2015 (except for the book, which apparently arrived today.
Alex Cordova, one of the founders of Hakkasan in the United States, announced this month he was leaving the company, and recently took a new job with a competitor.
4/2/2016 Additional info can be found about the former alleged owner’s connection to money laundering via this search
4/2/2016 Hakkasan’s former alleged investor Owner Behind Purchase of Walker Tower + Money Laundering Investigation
4/2/2016 Hakkasan’s former alleged investor Owner+Arrest Warrant
4/2/2016 – Hakkasan’s Legal Affairs Wanted to me to make it clear the rumors from VegasTripping of Moffitt Leaving are unverified, unsubstantiated. I am willing to make that change, because I did note it was a rumor. They want me to note that Hakkasan wasn’t selling properties because of their bills, and this is also unsubstantiated. Of course, as I mentioned, these are rumors. However, since the former alleged OWNER of Hakkasan (identified in numerous sources) is the target of the investigation, I stand by this story.
4/2/2016 – Moffit’s personal attorney contacted me, to say Moffit does not in fact own this apartment. The press is reporting as such, but we have struck out. - http://pacevegas.com
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