Hotel’s Operator Accused on Taxes

The operator of the Radisson Plaza Hotel & Golf Course in Manhattan Beach deducted thousands of dollars from employee paychecks but failed to pass the tax money on to the state, the district attorney’s office has charged.

Horst Dieter Osterkamp is scheduled to appear May 10 in South Bay Municipal Court to answer misdemeanor criminal charges that he failed to turn over to the state $120,000 in taxes.

The allegations are among a set of problems that besets the management of the hotel, including a labor dispute and previous misdemeanor charges that the Radisson has not paid more than $200,000 in hotel bed taxes. If convicted of all the criminal allegations, Osterkamp could be sentenced to up to seven years in jail.

Osterkamp, 48, is president of US Hotel Properties, which operates the 364-room Radisson and about a dozen other American hotels. US Hotel leases the Radisson from a partnership headed by the investment firm of Shearson, Lehman, Hutton.