Arafat link to US bowling alleys

Celebrating bowlers at Strike Bethesda in suburban Maryland on Thursday were blissfully unaware that up in New York’s Greenwich Villag...

Celebrating bowlers at Strike Bethesda in suburban Maryland on Thursday were blissfully unaware that up in New York’s Greenwich Village, the alley’s owner had found himself in a brouhaha of Middle Eastern proportions.

A business magazine revealed on Wednesday that the late Yasser Arafat’s investments in US companies included $1.3 million in the New York company that owns Strike Bethesda and three other bowling alleys. Tom Shannon, chief executive of Strike Holdings LLC, announced that his company was returning the $1.3 million and severing all ties with the firm that made the investment, Virginia-based SilverHaze Partners. Strike Bethesda touts itself as a ‘‘unique atmosphere’’ for bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs, the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony. Shannon said some of his Jewish investors ‘‘took enormous offense’’ at his company’s having any money linked to the Palestinian Authority.

He said he didn’t know about it until Wednesday, when he read an article in Bloomberg’s Markets magazine about Arafat’s US holdings. Shannon said he had believed the money came from wealthy families who invested with SilverHaze Partners.

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Shannon said he knew SilverHaze’s managing partner, Zeid Masri, as a classmate at the University of Virginia’s business school. Shannon said Masri never told him that the money came from the Palestine Commercial Services Co. That is a West Bank-based holding company owned by the Palestinian Authority.

Arafat appointed his financial adviser to run the holding company, the article said. In a statement, the firm said it did nothing wrong in investing ‘‘the legitimately acquired funds of the Palestinian people…the funds invested are audited by Standard & Poor’s with the full knowledge of the US government.’’ A spokesman said Masri told him that the money came from a pension fund for Palestine Commercial Services Co., not Arafat’s personal money. —LAT-WP

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