Bowling Alley Will Return Arafat Funds

The head of a company that owns several U.S. bowling alleys, including a popular one in Greenwich Village, said Thursday that it was severing ties with a group linked to Yasser Arafat and would return its $1.3-million investment.

The late Palestinian leader invested the money in New York-based Strike Holdings, owner of Bowlmor Lanes in Greenwich Village, through a holding company he created called Onyx Funds, according to Bloomberg Markets magazine.

“We are in the process of placing the funds in the amount they invested in escrow to be returned,” Strike Holdings CEO Thomas Shannon said in a telephone interview. Strike Holdings also owns bowling alleys on Long Island and in Maryland and Florida.

“Effectively as of today the PCSC will have no investments in Strike Holdings,” Shannon added. The PCSC is a Ramallah-based holding company owned by the Palestinian Authority.

Later at a news conference at the bowling alley, Shannon said he was feeling “shock and outrage.”

“We don’t choose to be affiliated with any political-based organization, especially one that may or may not have ties to things we find absolutely abhorrent,” Shannon said.

Zeid Masri, managing partner of SilverHaze Partners, an investment firm based in Virginia, had told Bloomberg Markets that he invested the money in Strike Holdings for Onyx because he had been a former classmate of Shannon’s.

Shannon said at the news conference that he felt betrayed by Masri and that the origins of the money should have been revealed.

“My relationship with Mr. Masri is over,” Shannon said.

The money was among $799 million in international investments by Arafat that were detailed in newly released documents, Bloomberg Markets reported.

Other holdings included $285 million in Orascom, an Egyptian cellphone company, and $3.2 million in the U.S. software firm Simplexity, it said.