New York:
In one of the costliest sales in New York real estate history, a four-bedroom penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park was purchased for $190 million, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
The seller, scandal-ridden American billionaire Daniel Och, bought the apartment just two years ago for half the price for $93 million, according to the Journal.
The 900-square-foot apartment, located at 220 Central Park South in the heart of Manhattan, was one of the most expensive sales ever in New York, according to the Journal.
According to the newspaper, it went to an anonymous buyer.
Another unit in the same skyscraper was bought in 2019 by US hedge fund manager Ken Griffin for $238 million — the highest amount ever paid for a private residence in the United States, according to the paper.
Oh, 61, has a net worth estimated by Forbes at approximately $4.1 billion.
He founded New York-based investment firm Och-Ziff Capital Management, which changed its name to Sculptor in September 2019 following a bribery scandal in which Och was directly involved.
The company, which managed $37.5 billion last year, paid $413 million in 2016 to settle charges it bribed officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya and other African countries.
Och was personally involved in the bribery, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which authorized two corrupt transactions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
When Och bought the Central Park penthouse in 2019, he had already changed his state of residence to Florida for tax reasons, but planned to use the New York apartment as his pied-a-terre, the Journal reported.
Och still owns another luxury apartment around the corner, which he listed in 2019 for $57.5 million, according to the Journal, but he removed the listing five months ago.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)