In true Apprentice
style, US property mogul Donald Trump has fired socialite Patricia Kluge from
her own former winery. As
reported on db.com, Kluge was forced
to sell her 314-hectare Kluge Estate Winery and
Vineyard in Charlottesville, Virginia, at auction last
April.
Trump, a friend of Kluge, bought the estate for
US$6.2 million. He has since changed the name to Trump Vineyard Estates and
brought in his son Eric as president. At the time of the takeover, Kluge was
offered the role of vice president of operations, but the one-year transitional
contract has officially expired.
"We gave her a transition contract for the
first year, and that has ended. We are still working with her a little bit, and
we still have a good relationship with Patricia,” Trump told the New York Post. “It’s never easy when you
build something like that and you end up working for the people that are owning
it,” Trump added.
His son Eric said: “It was always known she
was going to help us transition from bank owned to Trump owned, she did so very
effectively. This is an exciting transition. We’ve been winning awards right
and left. Business is great. Our trajectory in terms of new business coming in
is literally vertical,” he said.
Kluge’s husband, Bill Moses, oversees
the property as general manager – a role that is set to continue. Kluge received a US$100 million divorce settlement in 1990 from broadcasting
billionaire John Kluge, the richest man in America
in the ‘80s. She declared bankruptcy last June.
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