Oroya Park Avenue
Taken from Caretas Magazine, Peru, February 14, 2008

A commercial transaction in New York has shaken up the whole shebang. Multimillionaire Ira Rennert, owner of the Doe Run Peru (DRP) mining company among other things, bought two apartments in the exclusive 740 Park Avenue building in the heart of Manhattan last Friday, February 8th.

It wouldn’t be anything unheard of had Rennert not paid $32 million and $33 million dollars respectively for the apartments. The owner of Doe Run and the Renco Group bought the apartments for his daughters Tamara and Yonina. Critic Max Abelson of the New York Observer considers the two duplexes to be some of the most coveted apartments in United States.

One could understand why. 740 Park Avenue is a historic building that forms part of the incunable architecture of the Big Apple. Writer Michael Gross wrote a book in which he describes a 75 year history of the apartments where the most select citizens of the high life of New York have lived. They range from John D. Rockefeller to families whose last names are Vanderbilt, Bouvier, Chrysler, and Houghton, up to the current elite: Bronfman, Perelman, Kravis, Steinberg, Koch and Schwarzman.

The president of the committee of property owners is Charles Stevenson, Jr., the husband of Alex Kuczynski, daughter of the ex-Prime Minister of Peru Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Alex Kuczynski is a renowned journalist for the New York Times.

And how was Rennert able to pay $65 million in one day? Well, the man literally swims in money. In 2007, the good sales in the metals market allowed DRP, the metallurgical company that operates in La Oroya, to obtain $150 million dollars in profits. Crunching the numbers one can understand why. However, the cost is much higher. […] Furthermore, the archbishop of Huancayo, Peru, Pedro Barreto led a delegation that travelled to New York to meet with Rennert to explain to him “the problem of the contamination in La Oroya.” The delegation was not received.