Cirque Du Salahi: Be Careful Who You Trust (8 page)

This outburst, and many others, was likely the result of Dirgham’s advancing dementia or possibly Alzheimer’s disease. The precise diagnosis remains unclear, but at this writing Dirgham has become completely incapacitated.

This same female employee also explained that she was paid part of her salary from an Oasis Vineyard account, the other part from Oasis Enterprises Inc. “It wasn’t unusual,” she said, “for my vineyard paycheck to get a ‘stop payment’ on it. If Corinne got mad at you, she’d just stop your check. It was a terrible way to live, because the landlord isn’t going to wait for half their money.”

The fight for control of the winery shifted into full blown war at the end of 2006. Corinne Salahi was at the Hume location more than ever before, and she complained bitterly about her son’s spending habits and bad management techniques. Tareq and Michaele insist Corinne did not know much about the vineyard business as her career had been concentrated on the Montessori school. The younger Salahis say they were trying mightily to keep the business afloat despite, what they call Corinne’s deliberate sabotage. Employee turnover was high, due mostly to those protesting Corinne’s and Dirgham’s abusive treatment and there was an ever present imbalance in the cash drawer at the end of the day.

“It was exhausting every day,” Michaele said, “But what else could we do? This is Tareq’s legacy.”

Things finally got so tense in November of 2006 Corinne Salahi hired a lawyer to do battle with her son. Ultimately, the two sides agreed to put the struggling vineyard into receivership. A court appointed monitor would be brought in to make an independent judgment as to who should run the day-to-day operations of Oasis Vineyards. Court receiver, Huntley Thorpe, quickly decided managerial duties would go to Tareq. Thorpe was to commence looking for a suitable buyer for the property—maybe even Tareq himself, if he could get together a solid enough business plan.

Corinne Salahi would not be denied what she honestly felt was hers alone. Teaming with a friendly local real estate agent in early 2007, her son says she surreptitiously put Oasis Vineyard up for sale. Her husband apparently had no idea and co-owner Tareq says he absolutely didn’t know. “It was an illegal action,” Tareq would say later. “I don’t know how she thought she could get away with it.”

The well placed real estate offering caught the attention of none other than NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, whose purported girlfriend was a fan of Oasis wines.

“One day in the fall of 2007 I was just walking through the main tasting room,” Michaele recalls, “and we spotted each other. I knew Shaq and his wife, Shaunie, from my days at Nordstrom. They were great customers there.”

The two immediately recognized each other and Michaele asked in astonishment, “What are you doing here?” And according to Michaele, the conversation took a stomach churning turn.

Shaq replied, “I’m buying this place!” his arms outstretched to indicate he meant the whole property.

“Shaq,” Michaele remembers saying, “I married the owner of Oasis and my husband didn’t tell me anything about this.” To which he, reportedly replied in a breezy manner, “Oh, yeah, well, I’m dealing with the mother.”

Michaele quietly telephoned Tareq to come back to the winery from a nearby satellite vineyard. She quickly explained what was happening and who was sitting in their tasting room saying he was about to buy the place.

Upon his return, Tareq quickly dismissed his wife’s suggestion to have Shaq, or his Uncle Mike, his business manager, sign a non-disclosure agreement before they all sat down to talk. Instead, Tareq immediately laid out his glossy prospectus brochure in front of the basketball great and began to enthusiastically tell him all about his future plans for renovation and expansion of the property.

“I told him about the welcoming center I wanted to build, the spa, the inn—all of it,” Tareq sheepishly admits. Michaele adds that Shaq interjected his own ideas for a Superman labeled wine. “He said he had Superman tattoos and I think he thinks of himself as Superman too, so he wanted to make a wine he could name after that.”

“We went out to dinner that night and Michaele and I thought, ‘Wow, this is the solution to our problem!’ We’d go into partnership with Shaquille O’Neal. Corinne could get her money and leave us alone. The celebrity cache, the ability to expand … it was going to be great!” Tareq said.

It wasn’t great. Michaele says despite Shaq’s verbal assurance to them that he’d back off from dealing solely with Corinne Salahi, he did not. Her asking price had been $6.5 million dollars. Shaq’s business group reportedly offered Mrs. Salahi less than $5 million and she took it. The deal was so close to being done that the court appointed receiver showed up one afternoon and told Michaele she had just minutes to vacate the property.

“I was sitting behind a desk and when I looked up and there was Mr. Thorpe with Sheriff Officers. He said to me, ‘this place has been sold you have ten minutes to gather up what you can and leave.’ I was stunned. I tried to say, ‘but I live here. My apartment, my medications ….’ But they didn’t want to listen.”

Tareq was off property at the time. When Michaele reached him via cell phone, Tareq alerted their attorney and they both quickly converged on the vineyard. “I told Michaele, don’t do anything. Just wait for us. Once we got there, our attorney told everyone in no uncertain terms that we weren’t going anywhere. And we didn’t.”

The whole mess wound up in court. O’Neal’s company, Tuscan Ventures, was pressing ahead with the plan to buy Oasis Vineyard. Tareq had quickly assembled a competitive deal with a friend, businessman Casey Margenau, which they hoped the court would approve, rather than accepting the deal of their adversary, the NBA superstar. The younger Salahis vividly remember going to the courthouse that late November day in 2007.

“We were clutching hands and Tareq said to me, ‘Oh, Michaele, I’m going to lose everything to a basketball player.’ I felt so awful for him. Tareq had helped his dad live out his dream by going to the best university for wine. He loved that place. Winemaking was in Tareq’s blood. But I thought he was right. We were going to lose to Shaq that day.”

Miraculously the judge ruled in Tareq and Michaele’s favor, refusing to strip the son of his legacy. Though this appeared to be a huge victory, the deal with Margenau would ultimately fall apart and throw the fate of Oasis Vineyards into even more hellish limbo.

On December 11, 2008, as the U.S. economy was hurtling toward recession, Corinne Salahi unilaterally placed Oasis Vineyards, Inc. into bankruptcy.

“She didn’t have the right to do that,” Tareq says through clenched teeth. “My father gave me power of attorney in 2006. I am a co-owner of the business. She had no right to do what she did without including me.”

Corinne Salahi maintains that the power of attorney her husband signed over to her in 2002 supersedes the document her son has, as Dirgham was not mentally fit in 2006. At this writing the court has not ruled on that issue and Salahis young and old are still wrangling over the property, neither side willing to concede an inch to the other.

Politics—Use and Be Used

Virginia’s Lt. Governor Tim Kaine flashed his broad politician’s smile at the group of some 75 people gathered on the wooden back deck at the award winning Oasis Vineyard and winery in Hume, Virginia.

It was a beautiful early evening in the late spring of 2004 and Kaine was running for Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The sun was just about to set and with the vineyard’s 100 lush acres of grapes, peaceful pond and rolling hills as his backdrop (and with a glass of the winery’s award winning product in hand) Kaine told the democrats before him about his plans for the future of Virginia. He humbly asked for their financial support. Standing nearby was his beaming benefactor, the family winery’s co-owner, Tareq Salahi, and his stunningly beautiful blonde wife, Michaele.

The couple was already well known in Virginia social and political circles. In fact, the administration of the current Governor, Mark Warner, would soon approach Tareq for a major favor. As an avid polo player since his youth Tareq counted among his polo buddies, His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. He and Michaele had been the honored guests of Prince Charles as far back as March 2001 when they attended a special reception at St. James’s Palace. Governor Warner wanted an introduction to the royal family so the commonwealth could invite Queen Elizabeth to take part in Virginia’s 400th anniversary celebration. Though the event was still two years away, Warner believed it was never too early to start networking. The Salahis would agree to the assignment and help secure the Queen’s visit to Virginia.

So it was not a surprise that Lt. Governor Kaine would choose the Oasis Vineyard venue for his 2004 kickoff fundraising effort. And the event was just one of many times Kaine would lean on the Salahis for political support, generous donations of money and cases of wine for democratic political events.

That evening Tareq Salahi and other winery owners spoke candidly with Kaine about their industry’s long standing problems with local and state officials. Vineyard owners wanted to repeal the laws that forbid out of state shipping of wine and local zoning restrictions which kept them from attracting business to their beautiful Blue Ridge Mountain area properties. Neighbors along the rural roads had complained about the increase of tourist traffic as customers made their way to winery tastings, festivals, murder mystery dinners or lavish weddings and the good old boys in charge of local government bowed to demands to curb the number of visitors to the area.

The night of the political fundraiser, Salahi pointed out to Kaine the great benefits of promoting what he called the “Wine Way Region” of Fauquier County. “Agro-tourism,” as Tareq called it, was environmentally kind to the land, when compared with other industries it put virtually no undue stressors on Virginia’s social services, it fed the tax base and could, ultimately, bring in countless millions of tourist dollars to ancillary businesses like hotels and restaurants. Tareq waxed poetic about his dream of someday making Virginia wine country competitive with California’s Napa Valley and other famous oenophile tourist spots. He was bubbling with ideas and Kaine seemed vitally interested.

Tareq Salahi was already serving as a member of Virginia’s Wine Board. He would ultimately be appointed by Governor Kaine to the Virginia Tourism Authority and the Salahis would be credited far and wide as being the catalyst for passage of new laws that greatly contributed to the industry’s stability and growth.

“Somebody said to me, ‘So, Tareq, change the law if you don’t like it!’ And I said, ‘You can do that?’”