A brand new e-book reveals a weird feud between André Balazs and the previous political chief of St. Barts — with the hotelier claiming the pol sabotaged his try to construct a lodge on the island. A brand new e-book reveals a weird feud between André Balazs and the previous political chief of St. Barts — with the hotelier claiming the pol sabotaged his try to construct a lodge on the island.
In “Treasured Island: The Story of St. Barth. . . and its Barbarians, Billionaires and Beauties,” creator Michael Gross claims the meat started a long time in the past when Balazs was relationship Uma Thurman, and the Commonplace founder claims native huge Bruno Magras tipped off paparazzi when the couple got here to the island. (Balazs dated the Hollywood legend from 2003 till 2007.)
But it surely received uglier, in line with Balazs — who has owned the Chateau Marmont in LA, the Mercer Resort in Soho, Sundown Seashore within the Hamptons and the Chiltern Firehouse in Lon don, amongst others — when he tried to construct an eco-hotel behind the dunes of the well-known nude seashore Saline.
The mission was sunk when 1,200 island residents signed a petition opposing it.
Nonetheless, Balazs now alleges to Gross the true drawback was that Magras made a cope with a brand new island home-owner, Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, to develop his close by property as a substitute of backing the lodge.
Magras dismissed Balazs’ accusations as “mental masturbation” and, oddly, “cat meals.”
Supplied the final phrase by Gross, Balazs caught to his story of “corruption so extreme” his lawyer “couldn’t penetrate it.”
He nonetheless owns the land, he says. “I assume I can camp out on it someday,” he quipped.
The e-book, from Harper Collins, is out now. Gross is the creator of almost a dozen books on the American higher courses, together with “Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Way forward for America’s Unique Ruling Class,” “Focus: The Secret, Horny, Typically Sordid World of Vogue Photographers” and “Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals That Made the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork.”
