The Dirty Dillies of...
DILLINGHAM CORP
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
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October 17, 2008
Duncan MacNaughton Tapped to Lead Nature Conservancy Board
Conservancy Well-Positioned to "Usher in New Era of Conservation"
HONOLULU, HI — Duncan MacNaughton, founding partner and chairman of The MacNaughton Group, has been elected chair of the Board of Trustees for The Nature Conservancy of Hawai‘i, the organization announced today.
MacNaughton, who has served on the Conservancy’s board since 1994, succeeds David Cole, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Maui Land & Pineapple Co., Inc., who chaired the Hawai‘i Board for the past four years.
“It is with great pleasure that I pass the reins of the Conservancy’s Hawai‘i program to Duncan McNaughton,” Cole said. “I have great respect for Duncan’s commitment to Hawai‘i and the thoughtful, strategic approach he brings to conservation. His knowledge and leadership will ensure the success of the Conservancy’s mission for years to come.”
MacNaughton was raised in the islands and attended Punahou School and Hawai‘i Preparatory Academy. He graduated from Colorado College and began a career in real estate development in 1967 with the Dillingham Corporation.
As chairman of The MacNaughton Group, he has been involved in developing a variety of successful Hawaii-based retail and condominium properties around the State and all Blockbuster, Starbucks, Jamba Juice and P.F. Chang locations in the islands. In addition to The Nature Conservancy, he serves on the boards of Punahou School and Hawaii Preparatory Academy.
“The Conservancy has been fortunate throughout its history to have board chairs who are deeply committed to conservation and to the overall betterment of Hawai‘i,” said Suzanne Case, the Hawai‘i Program's Executive Director. “Duncan MacNaughton continues a tradition started by Sam Cooke and carried forward by Bill Mills, Jeff Watanabe and David Cole. He will be a tremendous asset both for our organization and conservation statewide.”
During Cole’s tenure, the Conservancy partnered with Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. to create the State’s third largest private nature preserve at spectacular Wainiha Valley on Kaua‘i; initiated fellowship programs in both forest and marine conservation to train the next generation of conservation leaders in Hawai‘i; and developed new innovative conservation tools, including remote sensing cameras to map invasive weeds on Kaua‘i, and the “Super Sucker” underwater vacuum cleaner to remove alien algae from coral reefs. In addition, the Conservancy established a research station on Palmyra Atoll where the world’s leading scientists can study climate change, disappearing coral reefs and other global threats.
“The Conservancy is well positioned to continue advancing the cause of conservation, especially during this time of uncertainty and change,” MacNaughton said. “Energy use, sustainability and climate change have become global priorities. Now more than ever, it is critical to have strong environmental leadership. The Conservancy’s proven track record of success puts us in a key position to usher in this new era of conservation.”
The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. The Conservancy and its more than 1 million members have protected nearly 120 million acres worldwide.
The Nature Conservancy Press Release
February 6, 2003
Construction giant files
bankruptcy, plans to move
Pleasanton's Dillingham will shrink
amid public works legal morass
Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle
Pleasanton's Dillingham Construction, which dredged the main channel into Pearl Harbor and helped repair the Bay Bridge after the Loma Prieta earthquake, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and plans to move to Florida and emerge as a much smaller entity.
Founded in the 1880s to build a railroad across the swamps of Oahu, Dillingham became a leading engineering and construction firm, building dams, airfields, high-rise offices, hotels and embassies around the world -- including San Francisco's Embarcadero One, the Hyatt at Union Square and the Wells Fargo Building.
But in the past decade, Dillingham became embroiled in several nasty disputes with government customers -- notably Los Angeles and San Francisco -- in which the company said it was owed millions, while the cities or counties alleged overbilling, substandard construction and misrepresentation of minority involvement.
"It's not uncommon with public agencies where the contractor like Dillingham will file a request for extra payment because of changes or some delays they feel were caused by the owner agency," said Dillingham CEO Donald Sundgren. "In today's world, the owner agency then files charges against the contractor as a defense mechanism over any number of things -- minorities, false claims. It's an insidious, expensive and litigious process."
San Francisco Deputy City Attorney David Norman saw it differently.
"They bid on such a short margin that if anything goes wrong in bidding or the performance of the work, they're destined to lose money, so they need to recover it one way or another," he said.
Dillingham is suing San Francisco for payment of cost overruns in constructing the Tenderloin School and a building at San Francisco International Airport. The city is suing Dillingham for allegedly lying about minority partnerships in those projects. The case is scheduled for trial June 1.
"It seems like every job they had in Northern California in the past couple of years ended up in a (legal) action," Norman said.
In 2000, an African American construction worker won a $490,000 settlement from Dillingham after a hangman's noose with a life-size effigy of an African American man was hung on a crane at his SFO work site. Dillingham said that was an isolated incident "derived from the acts of an individual dispatched to the Dillingham job site from the union hall."
In Los Angeles, the company had bitter disputes over major projects building the subway, an emergency operations center and a wastewater treatment plant.
A month before trial was set to begin, Dillingham settled a suit alleging it overbilled for the county's Emergency Operations Center in East Los Angeles.
Without admitting wrongdoing, Dillingham accepted a 20-year ban on bidding on any public works projects in the county.
Sundgren said that was fine by him. "Los Angeles has been nothing but a graveyard for us," he said.
Dillingham is suing the city of Los Angeles for $66 million over its construction of the Hyperion Wastewater Treatment plant, saying the city botched plans for the project and then expected the builder to swallow the cost.
A Dillingham joint venture, Parsons-Dillingham, is battling with the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority over alleged overbilling on the Metro Rail subway project.
Sundgren said the company took on huge debts to finance the disputed projects. Although Dillingham had 2001 revenue of $1.26 billion -- making it the 10th-largest private company in the Bay Area, according to Chronicle rankings -- it failed to turn a profit in the past two years, he said.
"The way we finance those projects was to borrow the money. We have never recovered that money to date, so (we) got very deeply in debt," Sundgren said. "We got to a debt level that was untenable. It was too difficult for us to carry the debt burden further."
The two largest creditors are GMAC and Fireman's Fund, according to bankruptcy papers filed by Dillingham and its 11 subsidiary companies on Jan. 28 in Oakland.
Sundgren joined Dillingham in 1983 when it bought Watkins Engineers and Constructors in Tallahassee, Fla., where he had been CEO for 10 years.
After Dillingham emerges from bankruptcy protection in four to six months, it will take the Watkins name and be headquartered in Tallahassee, Sundgren said by phone from the Florida capital. The reorganized firm will have about 400 employees, down from Dillingham's peak of 1,500.
Watkins will focus on process industrial work -- "smokestack industries like pulp and paper, power, chemicals, primarily in the Southeast," he said.
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Dillingham's rise and fall
Dillingham Corp. suffered growing pains through the decades before filing for Chapter 11 protection.
1865: Benjamin Franklin Dillingham, a mate on the Cape Cod whaler Whistler, is stranded on the Hawaiian islands with a broken leg after falling from a horse. After losing his savings in a failed banana export venture, Dillingham works as a clerk for H. Dimind & Sons, hardware merchants.
1869: Dillingham buys H. Dimind & Sons.
1889: Granted a royal franchise by King Kalakaua, Dillingham's son, Walter, organizes a group of investors into the Oahu Railway and Land Co. to build a 179-mile railroad to develop large-scale sugar cane production.
1902: After Benjamin Dillingham suffers a nervous breakdown, his son establishes the Hawaiian Dredging and Construction Co.
1909-41: Dillingham's companies diversify. Projects include Pearl Harbor dry docks (1909), the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills (1928), and Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles (1935).
1941: After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Dillingham joins a consortium to build air bases on islands captured from the Japanese.
1961: Lowell Dillingham, Walter's son, gradually assumes control of the company, overseeing the merger of Hawaiian Dredging and the Oahu Railway in 1960 to form the Dillingham Corp. and transforming the family business into a public company.
1962: Wins contract to build the 43-story Wells Fargo building at Post and Stockton streets in San Francisco.
1966: Constructs Hawaii's Ala Moana Shopping Center, the largest in the world at that time.
1972: Completes the Hyatt hotel on Union Square, San Francisco.
1979: Builds the New Melones Dam in Sierra Nevada.
1986: The Golden Gate Bridge District files suit in San Francisco Superior Court against the joint venture of Dillingham/Tokola on the bridge deck replacement project. The suit seeks damages of $8 million for allegedly defective paint on the new deck and sidewalk sections.
1987: Dillingham Construction Corp., the large construction arm of Dillingham Corp. is sold to the U.S. subsidiary of the Japanese Shimizu Construction Corp. Ltd.
1988: Dillingham suffers record losses stemming from the industrywide slump and money-losing projects. Moves its headquarters from San Francisco to Pleasanton.
1989: Helps repair the Bay Bridge after Loma Prieta earthquake.
1996: J. Martin Gerlinger, a former finance manager, files a whistle-blower lawsuit claiming that Parsons-Dillingham overcharged the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority by $20 million.
1999: Dillingham files a $66 million suit against the city of Los Angeles claiming the city concealed problems with plans for the Hyperion Wastewater Treatment plant and failed to pay the company for costs it incurred in making changes.
2000: Dillingham Construction Inc. agrees to not bid on any public works construction projects in Los Angeles County for 20 years to avoid a lawsuit alleging that the company fraudulently billed the county while building the Emergency Operations Center in East Los Angeles.
From: FaKToR
Date: April 28, 2000
Subject: FAKTOR -025: Daftar kekayaan Soeharto dkk di Hawaii & benua Amerika
HAWAII (U.S.)
Soeharto: Soeharto has never taken Ibnu Sutowo, whom in the mid 1970s involved the Indonesian state-owned oil and gas mining company Pertamina in a US$ 10 billion tanker scandal, to court. Hence, it has been alleged that Ibnu is, or was, one of Soeharto’s business operators. Consequently, companies and business people who were involved in that Pertamina scandal also have to be suspected of involvement in Soeharto’s family businesses.
One Honolulu-based company which was involved in the Pertamina tanker scandal was:
Dillingham Corporation/Dumai Dockyards Ltd.
These twin companies were predominantly owned by Lowell Dillingham, who joined Ibnu Sutowo and Bruce Rappaport in establishing the Dumai Dockyards Ltd. In 1973, Dillingham bought a company involved in constructing ships and properties in the Pacific region from two Norwegian shipowners, Hjalmar Bjorge and Anders Jahre.
Dillingham Corporation owned nearly 50% shares of the Hong Kong-based company, RJB Holding, which in turn owned 75% shares of Dumai Dockyard Ltd, a tanker shipyard built by Pertamina (read: Ibnu Sutowo) in Dumai, Riau, with a capacity to serve 20,000 ton tankers.
Representing Dillingham Corporation in the Dumai Dockyards was Lowell Dillingham himself, John Richard Jensen, Thomas D. Opatz, and Harold L. Malterre....
Board of Directors:
Lowell Dillingham: Company Executive of Dumai Dockyards Ltd.
John Richard Jensen: Company Executive of Dumai Dockyards Ltd.
Thomas D. Opatz (Alternate Director for L. Dillingham): Company Executive of Dumai Dockyards Ltd.
Harold L. Malterre: President, Dillingham Maritime-Pacific Division
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Sudwikatmono (Suharto’s cousin and longest family business operator, currently suffering from stroke): owns penthouse #2802 in Plaza Landmark condominium tower on 5333 Likini Street, Honolulu: Bought (officially) in May 1985 for US$ 216,400.
In 1997, this 1984 condominium, which is clearly under Sudwikatmono’s name, is estimated to be US$ 253,000 worth. That is, however, not the real price, since the building is owned by top executives of the Salim and Metropolitan Groups, where Sudwikatmono represents the Suharto interests.
Owner of building: Lakeside Development, Inc.
Founded on November 30, 1979 in Honolulu by Anthony P. Tjan ... and John P. Moon (Attorney...). Anthony Tjan became President/Secretary/Treasurer, while John Moon became Vice President.
Then, on March 5, 1988, the board was changed. Anthony Tjan became Executive Vice President and Handoyo Yahya became Treasurer.
Finally, on February 5, 1990, the board was changed again to become as follows:
President & Director: Budi Brasali (Ciputra & Brasali Groups)...
Executive Vice President: Anthony P. Tjan...
Treasurer: Handoyo Yahya...
Secretary: Indriati Latif (Atang Litief Group)...
Chairman of Board of Directors: Atang Latief...
Director: Tedy Djuhar (Salim Group)...
Director: Deddy Kusuma (Salim Group)...
Owners of the penthouses in Plaza Landmark:
Sudwikatmono: penthouse #2802
Anthony Tjan: penthouse #2303
A.P. Brasali: penthouse #2804
Anthony Salim (CEO of Salim Group): penthouse #2805
Andre Halim (Anthong Salim’s brother): penthouse #2806
Sutanto Djohar (Salim Group’s core sharaeholder): penthouse #2705
Tedy Djuhar (Sutanto Djohar’s son): penthouse #2704/2705
Ibrahim Risyad (Salim Group & Napan Group & Risyadson Group’s core shareholder): penthouse #2709
Henry Pribadi (idem as Ibrahim Risyad): penthouse # 2710
Most likely, this condominium tower is used by members of the Soeharto clan and the Salim top executives to wine and dine their business associates in Honolulu. The condo tower overlooks the exclusive (members only) Honolulu Country Club golf course around Honolulu’s Salt Lake.
Manager of condo tower: Pacific Landmark Realty, Inc.
This real estate company was founded in Honolulu on June 25, 1993, by relatives of Anthony Tjan, namely G. Tjan (President/Secretary/Treasurer), Edwin M. Tjan (Vice President) and Meta F. Tjan ...
Address: 1188 Bishop St., Century Square Building, Suite 2703, Honolulu, HI 96813
It’s sister company is: Pacific Landmark Pte. Ltd., c/o Tan Wee Tin & Co., 1 Godhill Plaza, Podium Block #03-39, Singapore 308899.
This company has a US$ 2,969,000 claim on Sukamto Sia ...
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mimbarbebas/message/7831
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From: FaKToR
Date: April 28, 2000
Subject: FAKTOR -025: Daftar kekayaan Soeharto dkk di Hawaii & benua Amerika
HAWAII (U.S.)
In March 1996, a Southeast Asian investment syndicate, Camerlin, acquired 20% shares of the New Zealand-based investment company, Brierly Investments (BIL), for NZ$ 800 juta. Members of the Camerlin syndicate included the Salim Group from Indonesia (in which Sudwikatmono is one of the four founders, apart from the Salim patriarch, Liem Sioe Liong), Hong Leong Industries and the Renong Group from Malaysia, and Haw Par Brothers International ND Sembawang and the Singapore branch of Hon Leong Industries.
In 1989, BIL had acquired the Molokai Ranch, which owns a third of the land on the island of Molokai. This acquisition was done through a Hong Kong-based subsidiary of BIL, called Industrial Equity (Pacific) Ltd.
1. Molokai Ranch Group member companies:
Molokai Ranch, Limited: W G Haight, B A Hancox, J W Mozley Jr, M J O’Connor (R)
Cooke Land Company, Inc.
Molokai Meat Company, Limited
Molokai Ranch Land company, Limited
Molokai Ranch Outfitters, Inc.
Waiola O Molokai, Inc.
Wai Mau Corporation
MRL Food Services Inc.
MRL Water Reclamation, Inc.: W G Haight, J W Mozley Jr.
MRL Management Limited: W G Haight
Molokai Ranch Foundation: S. Goodenow, W G Haight (R), J W Mozley Jr, Ottina Haight...
2. IEP/Hawaii Acquisition Corp.:
D M Chown, G R Knoke, A R Meehan (R), M C K Moy
3. Industrial Equity (Pacific) Limited:
This is the parent company of Molokai Ranch Ltd, which, on behalf of BIL, acquired the ranch.
Address: 603A, China Building, 29 Queens Road, Central, Hong Kong.
Directors: D M Chown, M B Horton (R), G R Knoke, S J Temple (R)...
From http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mimbarbebas/message/7831
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For more, GO TO > > > The Buzzards of Bechtel; Confessions of a Whistleblower; Dirty Money, Dirty Politics & Bishop Estate; The Indonesian Connection; Office of the U.S. Trustee vs. Harmon - Witnesses: Guido Giacometti, Susan Tius, Sukamto Sia, Steven Guttman, Curtis Ching, Judith Neustadter Fuqua; Paradise Paved
For more dillies...
GO TO
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A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING KAMEHAMEHA'S COURT
CONFESSIONS OF A WHISTLEBLOWER
DIRTY MONEY, DIRTY POLITICS & BISHOP ESTATE
THE GRAND (AND DIRTY) KO OLINA
KAJIMA: BLOOD, BRIBES & BRUTALITY
P-S-S-T, WANNA BUY A GOOD AUDIT?
SUKAMTO SIA: THE INDONESIAN CONNECTION
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March 13, 2007: The U.S. Dept of Justice obtains Order from Judge David A. Ezra to shut down website.
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