Bayrock Group is a private real estate investment and development firm specializing in luxury residential, commercial and mixed use projects. Through its affiliated entities, Bayrock has made investments in transactions comprising real estate assets valued in excess of $ 2.5 billion. Bayrock's flexible investment strategy allows it to pursue investments in a variety of sectors and markets.
24-608: The Bayrock Group was founded in 2001 by Tevfik Arif , a former Soviet official from Kazakhstan . According to Forbes , Bayrock is "a series of commonly controlled, but not wholly owned, limited liability companies ." Bayrock Group is arranged in tiers, with Bayrock Group LLC having a majority or plurality interest in around 12 subsidiary holding companies . The holding companies in turn have majority interests in companies on lower tiers. The lower tier subsidiaries correspond to individual real estate projects, with Bayrock Spring Street corresponding to Trump SoHo, Bayrock Camelback to
48-454: A qui tam case against Bayrock in 2015. The suit alleged that Arif, Satter, and others had been in control of Bayrock for nearly a decade and had "engaged in a series of tax frauds and then took steps to hide the fraud"; this case was thrown out by a New York Judge. Felix Sater, an American entrepreneurial financier and real estate developer, was employed as managing director of Bayrock Group from 2003 to 2008. Unfortunately for Bayrock, during
72-575: A Novaya Gazeta article explained that Tevfik Arif is very close to Salim Abduvaliev and that both Arif and Abduvaliev are leaders of Uzbek mafia. In 2001, Arif founded the Bayrock Group , an international real estate and development company. He began developing property in Brooklyn, first redeveloping Loehmann's Seaport Plaza, a waterfront shopping center in Sheepshead Bay . Arif was originally
96-631: A $ 40 million stock fraud scheme orchestrated by the Russian-Jewish Mafia, and became an informant for the FBI, assisting with organized crime investigations. Tevfik Arif Tevfik Arif ( Russian : Тофик Арифов ; born May 1953), also known as Tofik Arifov , is a Russian/Turkish real estate developer and investor. He is the founder of the Bayrock Group , an international real estate development and investment company based in New York. He resides in
120-750: A 2008 investigation into Sater, a worrying and chequered past emerged that led to his suspension and dismissal. Amongst other things in 1991 he got into an argument with a commodities broker at the El Rio Grande restaurant and bar in Midtown Manhattan. Sater stabbed the broker's cheek and neck with a cocktail glass, breaking his jaw and severing nerves. Sater was convicted of first degree assault and spent 15 months in minimum security Edgecombe Correctional Facility in New York City, before being paroled. Additionally, in 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to his involvement in
144-682: A board member of Citymeals-on-Wheels, and New York Restoration Project. Rockwell also conceived and developed Imagination Playground pro-bono, a play space designed to encourage children to work together to create their own worlds of play. After five years of research on children and play, the first site-specific location opened in collaboration with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation at Burling Slip in Manhattan in 2010. Rockwell Group developed portable, scalable models that can transform smaller, unused areas into play spaces. Through
168-784: A joint venture with Trump to develop the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Fort Lauderdale, Florida . The working relationship with Donald Trump ended in 2008, following the housing market collapse. Trump International Hotel & Residence investor Ernest Mennes filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Arizona in 2007. The suit alleged that Bayrock had skimmed money from its planned Trump development in Phoenix . It further alleged that Felix Sater , an employee of Bayrock, had called Mennes in 2006, threatening him personally. The case
192-627: A potential site for the high-rise, a closed pencil factory named for Sacco and Vanzetti . "We looked at some very, very large properties in Russia," on the scale of "...a large Vegas high-rise." Bayrock proposed a potential deal in Moscow between Trump International Hotel and Russian investors in 2007, but the deal never came to fruition. The Trump SoHo is a $ 450 million, 46-story, 39-unit, condo-hotel hybrid located at 246 Spring Street in SoHo , New York City. The hotel
216-662: A theater family. His mother, a vaudeville dancer and choreographer, often cast him in community repertory productions. When he was 12, David's family moved from Deal, New Jersey to Guadalajara, Mexico. Rockwell trained in architecture at Syracuse University and the Architectural Association in London. Rockwell founded Rockwell Group in 1984. Rockwell currently serves as Chair Emeritus of the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA) and as
240-495: A three-story, 280,000-square-foot (26,000 m) waterfront shopping center on Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn . The property's tenants include Loehmann's and Nine West Shoes . In 2003, Bayrock purchased a site out of bankruptcy in the Camelback Corridor of Phoenix, Arizona . Bayrock announced plans for the Trump International Hotel & Residence , a $ 200 million, 190-foot Trump International Hotel. Plans for
264-577: The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Fort Lauderdale. The group were also involved in projects in Europe. Although the working relationship with Trump ended in 2008, following the housing market collapse, Bayrock came under close scrutiny in the United States due to its dealings with Trump between 2002 and 2011. Nothing out of the ordinary was uncovered, and no official action has been taken against
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#1732880707307288-590: The United States . Tevfik Arif was born Tofik Arifov in an ethnic Turkish family in Dshambul , Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic . His family came to Kazakhstan from Meskhetia , Georgia after the ethnic Turkish Meskhetian community were deported by Joseph Stalin in 1944. Arif received an international relations degree from a Moscow university. Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union , Arif worked for
312-763: The 2009 Pratt Legends Award; the Presidential Design Award for his renovation of the Grand Central Terminal ; induction into the James Beard Foundation Who's Who of Food & Beverage in America and Interior Design magazine's Hall of Fame; inclusion in Architectural Digest's AD 100; and the 2016 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Scenic Design of a Musical for She Loves Me and five Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Scenic Design of
336-534: The Phoenix hotel project, and Bayrock Merrimac to the Trump Fort Lauderdale hotel. Other Bayrock subsidiaries include Bayrock Whitestone and Bayrock Ocean Club . Bayrock Group has had strategic partnerships with international entities outside of the United States including Icelandic investment company FL Group . Bayrock began developing property in Brooklyn, initially redeveloping Loehmann's Seaport Plaza,
360-726: The U.N.I.C.E.F. P.L.A.Y. Project, in partnership with Disney, the blocks have been distributed to more than 13,000 children in Bangladesh and Haiti. Rockwell's honors include the 2016 Tony Award for Best Scenic Design for the musical She Loves Me and six Tony Award nominations for Best Scenic Design, the AIA New York Chapter President's Award; the 2008 National Design Award by the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum for outstanding achievement in Interior Design;
384-511: The USSR's Ministry of Commerce and Trade for 17 years. He served as the deputy director of its Department of Hotel Management. Arif resigned from the ministry in 1991 and founded Speciality Chemicals Trading Company, an export-import business trading in rare metals, chrome, and raw materials which owned at Aktobe the Aktobe plant of chromium compounds from 1996 until 2016. He then worked as an "agent on
408-505: The company. The Bayrock group received a lot of unfavorable press from two former employees, Felix Sater and Jody Kriss, however court cases that the two brought against the company have been settled out of court. Arif is believed to live in Turkey and spends time in Switzerland and England. Today, Tevfik Arif is partially retired from the family's business. Other family members now lead
432-503: The ground" in Kazakhstan for Trans World Group , a natural resources company run by David and Simon Reuben . Arif moved to Turkey in 1993, where he started to expand his business interests far beyond the mining and metal industries he had started in Kazakhstan. He diversified into energy trading (Penta Energy Investments), car dealerships (import and distribution partnership with Turkish conglomerate Ihlas Holding) and hotels. In 2002,
456-604: The group, and Tevfik Arif provides the role of consultant and adviser to family members. Although he is not Jewish, he is one of the largest donors to the Chabad of Port Washington. Rockwell Group David Rockwell (born July 21, 1956) is an American architect and designer. He is the founder and president of Rockwell Group , a 250-person cross-disciplinary architecture and design practice based in New York City with satellite offices in Madrid and Los Angeles. Rockwell grew up in
480-599: The project included 97 private residential units starting at $ 950,000 and 188 hotel/condo rooms. While the site was approved by the Phoenix City Council and the Planning Commission in 2005, the project was curbed by public opposition and never finished. In 2005, Donald Trump entered into an agreement with the Bayrock Group for a one-year deal to develop a project in Moscow. Bayrock located Russian investors and
504-628: The sole employee of Bayrock, later hiring Felix Sater as managing director. After moving the Bayrock Group to Trump Tower , Arif developed a relationship with businessman Donald Trump . Trump provided a licensing deal for the Trump SoHo hotel in a joint venture between the Bayrock Group and the Sapir Organisation . In 2007, Bayrock traded future profits from Trump SoHo and other projects in exchange for $ 50 million in financing from Icelandic company FL Group . Trump and Bayrock later developed
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#1732880707307528-487: Was a joint venture between Bayrock, The Trump Organization, and the Sapir Organization, a company owned by Georgian real estate developer Tamir Sapir . Trump provided a licensing deal for the hotel in exchange for an 18% equity stake in the project. In 2007, Bayrock traded future profits from Trump SoHo and other projects in exchange for $ 50 million in financing from Icelandic company FL Group . Bayrock entered into
552-445: Was settled by Bayrock and Mennes was barred from discussing the matter. In the federal case Kriss et al. vs. Bayrock Group LLC et al. , two former Bayrock employees, former director of finance Jody Kriss and Michael Chudi Ejekam, filed a suit in the U.S. District Court in New York in 2010. The suit alleged that Sater's role in the company was hidden and that the company was "substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated." The case
576-601: Was settled out of court at the insistence of plaintiffs, with no admission of guilt from either party. In 2011, the Rockwell Group , an interior design firm, sued Bayrock and Sapir Organization for over $ 1.5 million in damages after Bayrock failed to pay for interior design work at Trump SoHo. Bayrock countersued two days later, filing a complaint with the New York Supreme Court , the case was eventually dropped. Attorneys Frederick Oberlander and Richard Lerner brought
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