Cuba's mafia hotels get new owner

Friday, June 17, 2005 Posted: 0956 GMT (1756 HKT)

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- French hotel group Accor SA has taken over management of Cuba's Riviera and Capri hotels, two notorious haunts of the Mafia in pre-revolutionary Havana, the company's representative on Thursday.

"We are very excited. Our imaginations are already hard at work. We can do many things with these two classic establishments and their nightclubs," Accor executive Eric Pyre said.

Ginger Rogers was flown to Havana as a star attraction when Mafia boss Meyer Lansky opened the Riviera and its domed casino on Havana's waterfront in 1957.

The Capri, which will get a $15 million overhaul, was run for the mob by American actor George Raft until President Fidel Castro swept into power in a 1959 revolution that sent the gangsters running.



Why am I not going to feel sorry for the French hotel group Accor SA?

I refer the reader to this earlier thread by Tom Brosz Businesses screwed over by Castro and the communists.