“The family is devastated,” said Wayne Rapozo, the leader of the group of relatives who were trying to outbid their billionaire-backed cousin, in an email to the Guardian. Rapozo described the bidding process as “a front for fraud and deceit against the Rapozo family” and said that the case “violates fairly basic notions of justice in Hawaii and the United States”. The dispute between Andrade, Rapozo and Zuckerberg has its roots in Hawaii’s complicated history of land ownership. Among them was Andrade, who claims to be the only family member to have ever lived on or cared for the parcels – a claim other family members dispute. Litigation will continue, however, as Rapozo and another of the family “holdouts” have filed a separate claim alleging that Andrade’s alleged cooperation with Zuckerberg was improper.

Source: The Guardian June 07, 2019 00:00 UTC