The tycoon Alberto Cortina Alcocer has invested in the Luxembourg holding company that owns Ohai, the luxury camping chain run by the youngest son of the businessman and the billionaire Alicia Koplowitz, Pelayo Cortina Koplowitz. Alberto Cortina’s Swiss firm, Cinainvest Holding, gives this instrument a valuation of more than 141 million.
A year ago, this firm domiciled in Geneva (Switzerland) created an instrumental company in Luxembourg, Cinainvest Holding Lux, which has just submitted its first accounts to the Commercial Registry of the Grand Duchy. In them, she declares that she is the owner at the end of 2023 of 14.4% of Ilanga, the owner of Ohai. Cinainvest Holding Lux estimates in its accounts the value of that package at 20.4 million, which values 100% of the Ohai parent company at around 141.6 million.
In March 2021, elDiario.es announced that Cortina Koplowitz had domiciled the headquarters of its high-end camping business in Luxembourg, launched a couple of years earlier together with several executives from Parques Reunidos, after the purchase and remodeling of a resort in Nazaré (Portugal), “in the largest ecological reserve of pine forests on the Iberian Peninsula”, as they point out on their website.
With plans to expand in Spain and Portugal, Cortina Koplowitz’s project of bungalows, ‘glamping’ (glamorous campsites) and tourist apartments is presented as a company that is committed to sustainable, ecological and experiential tourism, with the aim of contribute to boosting the local economy while respecting the environment. A few months ago, Ohai hired Gerd Loewen, former CEO of Chicco or Babaria, as its first executive.
In addition to what is known as ‘glamping’, Ilanga presented its other line of business in 2023, the company Wellness & Clinic Resorts, which has announced an investment of 150 million for the opening in Marbella, scheduled for the end of 2025, of a hotel and a luxury clinic in the former Incosol resort. Closed for a decade, this Marbella complex was once famous for its weight loss clinic and for being a meeting place for personalities from film, music and art since its inauguration in 1973.
Some media has published that Cortina Koplowitz “flies alone” and “succeeds outside of his family” with Ohai and Ilanga. The documentation available in Luxembourg shows that among the shareholders of that fund in Luxembourg is the Swiss Cinainvest, linked for many years to his father.
Cinainvest established the company that controls 14.4% of Ilanga on October 13, 2023. Initially it was its only shareholder, but a few weeks later it transferred 49% of the shares of that vehicle to its main manager, Pelayo Cortina Koplowitz.
‘Los Albertos’, Fasana and the emeritus
Cinainvest is managed in Switzerland by Rhône Gestión, the large wealth management office of the financial advisor Arturo Fasana, who was in charge of creating companies in tax havens for Cortina and his cousin and partner in the construction company ACS, Alberto Alcocer, as revealed by the investigation. of The Panama Papers in 2016.
Fasana, who was freed from the bench in 2020 due to the Gürtel plot, was also the front man of King Juan Carlos, a person very close to the couple known as ‘Los Albertos’. Cortina and his cousin were the largest shareholders of Banco Zaragozano when the British Barclays bought this entity in 2003, in an operation that was related to the first relevant income (1.9 million) that Zagatka, the opaque foundation in the name of a cousin of Juan Carlos I, who financed the emeritus’ pleasure trips for a decade, and for which the emeritus paid 4.4 million euros to the Treasury in February 2021 to avoid going to trial for his tax crimes.
Established in 2007, Cinainvest is the holding company with which Alberto Cortina vehicles his participation in his most well-known project in recent years, his pan-African bank, grouped in the Afrika Financial Group holding company. The BDK Financial Group, chaired by Emilio Botín’s former right-hand man, Alfredo Sáenz (former CEO of Santander), is present in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mail, Benin, Togo and Conakry. A few months ago he signed former Secretary of State Jaime García-Legaz as an advisor.
In this project, Cortina and his cousin have been accompanied, among other shareholders, by Blas Herrero, owner of Kiss FM, the Venezuelan Alejandro Betancourt, who amassed an enormous fortune with the electricity crisis suffered by the South American country in 2009, or a mysterious firm of Singapore, Noganoir, which charged a million-dollar commission for the entry of the Royal Family of Qatar into El Corte Inglés.
Businessman César Álvarez, brother of the late former president of El Corte Inglés Isidoro Álvarez, is also a shareholder of Afrika Financial Group. His uncle and predecessor in the distribution group, César Areces, led the FCC construction company from the sudden death of the founder, Ernesto Koplowitz, until executive power in the company passed into the hands of two young executives in 1972: Alberto Cortina and his cousin. , the respective husbands of the then heiresses of FCC, Alicia and Esther Koplowitz.
Those known as ‘Albertos’ abruptly left FCC simultaneously in 1990, after their respective divorces, in a scandal halfway between the coated paper and the salmon press. Today both are still among the main shareholders of ACS. Alberto Cortina had 2.8% of Florentino Pérez’s construction company at the end of 2023 through three of his companies, and his cousin Alberto Alcocer Torra, another 2.39%, according to the latest ACS corporate governance report. Both came to own 13.86% of the company in 2010, when only the March family surpassed them (23.307%).
Alberto Cortina used Cinainvest years ago to carry a stake in ACS, with a package of 678,000 shares of the construction company at the end of 2013. Also to invest in the Canadian Pacific Rubiales, a defunct oil giant in Colombia, with the help of the Venezuelan Betancourt. And with it he became among the first investors in the Spanish technology company Jobandtalent. In the latter case, the relationship has ended in court, due to disagreements over the value of the job search platform’s shares.
Alberto Cortina is the brother of the late Alfonso Cortina, whom José María Aznar appointed as president of Repsol before privatizing the largest Spanish oil company. His grandfather was Alberto Alcocer, who was mayor of Madrid during the dictatorships of Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco. Son of Franco’s Foreign Minister Pedro Cortina, he is a traditional fixture in the rankings of the Spanish rich. Forbes places him among the 2,500 richest people on the planet, with a net worth of $1.3 billion.
This publication places him in 34th place in its latest ranking of the greatest Spanish fortunes, between the steel magnate José María Aristrain and the shipping owner Vicente Boluda, although well behind his ex Alicia Koplowitz (1.8 billion). The septuagenarian is also one of the great Spanish landowners. He owns the Las Cuevas farm, part of it located within the Cabañeros National Park. Between the municipalities of Navas de la Estena (Ciudad Real) and Hontanar (Toledo), the businessman controls 6,335 hunting hectares.
His son Pelayo Cortina Koplowitz, 39, has been Count of San Fernando de Peñalver since 2006. Based in London, the youngest of the three offspring that Cortina and Koplowitz had is the only one not linked to the management of Omega Capital, the investment firm of Alicia Koplowitz whose SICAV, Morinvest, hired Javier Fernández-Lasquetty, former economic guru of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, as an advisor a year ago.
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