Panama Trump Hotel Majority Owner Celebrates Trump Executives Being Evicted, Plays Piano

As the dispute in the Trump International Hotel in Panama — between the hotel owners and management executives — escalated and local law enforcement had to intervene to control the situation on Tuesday, the majority owner of the hotel, Orestes Fintiklis, was caught on camera playing the piano and joking in the lobby.

After seeking help from the Panama police and Panama’s Labor Ministry officials in getting the Trump management team — which refused to leave the premises after Fintiklis attempted to terminate the Trump Organization’s contract to manage the facility — out of hotel, the majority owner of the facility appeared to embody a winning spirit, as he sat down at the piano in the hotel’s lobby and played Beethoven’s "Für Elise," according to Mercury News.

Later on, he joked about being accused of using “mob-style” tactics to evict the employees working for the Trump Organization by saying: “I’m a multi-talented mobster.”

As Fintiklis entertained hotel guests with live music, a physical confrontation was going on between Trump Organization employees, and non-Trump staffers. Members of the management team barricaded themselves inside a room filled with computers — a room where non-Trump employees were supposed to have access to, but were not allowed to enter on Tuesday. Finally, the police had to intervene to resolve the tense standoff.

A worker present inside the room at the time, made a video of the reported altercation and uploaded it on social media, which went viral.

Fintiklis originally planned to terminate the contract with the Trump Organization in October 2017, because he blamed the president’s namesake brand of negatively impacting the revenue of the hotel. He expressed his desire to no longer have the hotel associated with the Trump brand or the current management, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The dispute started with a few yelling matches and Trump executives refusing to leave the premises. It then escalated dramatically late last week when Fintiklis was prevented from entering his own property by the employees.

On Monday, the Panama federal prosecutors said an investigation is being opened into the Trump Organization, after Fintinklis’ attorney filed a complaint with the court after his client was unlawfully blocked from the hotel where he owns a majority stake.

That same day, the Trump Organization issued a statement about the standoff in Panama, blaming Fintiklis of resorting to “thug-like” antics in order to evict the management team, and ignoring the court’s actions over the future of the property.

“It now appears as though Mr. Fintiklis has either lost patience with the pace of the proceedings which he commenced or simply lacks the financial backing he once claimed he had,” the statement said.

Jordan Libowitz of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said Trump should be concerned over the fact that a foreign government is investigating his business.

“The fear has always been that there would be an international incident involving the finances of the president, and the president would have his loyalties questioned,” Libowitz said. “What kind of pressure would he be willing to place on them?”