Play That Back Again, Please

Simple souls that we are, we’ll take this step by step, so as not to give way to unworthy suspicion:

The Los Angeles County Supervisors have voted 4-0 to allow Abraham Lurie, the largest leaseholder in the publicly owned Marina del Rey, to sell 49.9% of his holdings to people the county doesn’t know. But that’s OK, Mr. Lurie doesn’t know who his new partners are, either.

Isn’t that odd?

No, because the county’s new tenant is a California company owned by a Cayman Islands firm which is a subsidiary of a holding company based in Luxembourg. The Caymans, you will recall, have a demonstrated affection for entrepreneurial capitalism extending back to the days of the Caribbean pirates, while tiny Luxembourg has laws of incorporation requiring about as much public disclosure as the confessional.

But shouldn’t somebody know who the people who own these companies are?

Of course they should, and someone does: The new investors’ Parisian bankers and their Chicago lawyer.

Oh, that makes it all right. Everybody we know does business that way. But just for the sake of argument, how do we really know these people aren’t, well, less than lovable?

Actually, we know they’re on the up-and-up for the same reason the supervisors know it: Their Chicago lawyer, Mr. Cornelius J. Sullivan, has assured us that, while he cannot reveal their identities, the new leaseholders simply are successful foreign business people who “prefer to protect their privacy and avoid the public limelight.”

That makes us feel much better. If a lawyer knew that the people who’d paid his fee were not of absolutely impeccable character, he’d certainly tell us. And, if the supervisors had even the slightest reason to suspect anything was amiss, they certainly would have pursued the matter.