Leona Helmsley’s executors seek $100M for handling estate
The four men overseeing late billionaire Leona Helmsley’s estate want their own fortune — $100 million — for handling the Queen of Mean’s property empire while fending off cash grabs by disgruntled family and workers.
The sum is actually “modest,” claim the quartet — Helmsley’s grandsons, David and Walter Panzirer, lawyer Sandor Frankel and close pal John Codey — in the Manhattan Surrogate’s Court petition filed earlier this week.
They sniffed that state law actually allows them to receive twice the amount.
The men would split the nine-figure payout equally, the petition states.
The Panzirers already got $10 million gifts from the will.
The fee is only 2 percent of Helmsley’s $5.4 billion estate, comprised of 80 real-estate holdings including the Empire State Building and Wal-Mart stores around the country, plus $2 billion in municipal bonds and millions more in personal luxuries such as American silver, Russian artwork and 250 pairs of Ferragamo shoes.
The sale of Helmsley’s controlling interest in the iconic skyscraper brought $700 million to estate coffers.
Since Helmlsey died in 2007, the executors have been working “exhaustively” to squeeze as much cash as possible out of their benefactor’s assets, according to court papers.
“They administered an unprecedented estate, dizzying in both the value and complexity of its assets,” the petition says.
“There should be a direction correlation between the burdens and rewards of the office,” the executors state.
The estate was initially valued at $4.8 billion, but the executors — who waited out the financial crises and housing collapse before selling off prime real estate — were able to earn an additional $600 million for charity, the petition says.
“Disposition of the estates assets in this hostile environment required years of sustained effort,” the executors say.
The men pat themselves on the back for quickly settling a potentially costly legal battle by two of Helmsley’s grandchildren whom she specifically disinherited “for reasons which are known to them” in her 2005 will.
The grandkids, Craig Panzirer and Meegan Panzirer, eventually received $6 million in total.
The foursome also won a reduction of a whopping $12 million set aside for the tycoon’s dog Trouble. They got it down to to $2 million, with the rest going to charity.
Finally, they investigated and resolved “favorable” settlements for legal threats from former employees, including one who attempted to extort the executors.
The unnamed staffer’s 2008 claim was related to work at Helmsley’s $35 million Connecticut mansion, Dunnellen Hall, the petition says.
They paid out a total of $36,916,475 in taxes, settled all debts and completed bequests.
Surrogate’s Judge Nora Anderson will have to approve the fortune in fees, although she already green-lighted an interim $4.5 million payment in 2012.