Gordon Sondland is a key witness in the Trump impeachment inquiry - and the founder of a boutique luxury hotel chain. Here's how the US ambassador to the EU made his fortune of at least $78 million.
Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, is testifying before Congress today as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
The 62-year-old diplomat said Wednesday that Trump engaged in a quid pro quo with Ukraine by conditioning military aid and a White House meeting on Zelensky carrying out the investigations he wanted.
Sondland didn't originally support Trump's presidential campaign, but after the election, he donated $1 million for his inauguration.
Trump nominated Sondland — who had no previous diplomatic experience — as ambassador to the EU in May 2018.
Sondland has assets worth between $78 million and $185 million, he reported in financial disclosures to the State Department in May 2019.
The disclosures show that Sondland and his wife, Katherine Durant, reported income of between $5.5 million and $9.3 million in 2018 and the first four months of 2019.
Sondland's attorney did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on Sondland's net worth and finances.
Sondland also reported credit card debt of between $75,000 and $165,000.
Sondland and his wife have a charitable foundation, the Gordon D. Sondland and Katherine J. Durant Foundation, which they founded in 1999. It donates to organizations including the Portland Art Museum, OMSI, OHSU, New Avenues for Youth, Oregon Ballet Theatre, the Portland Parks Foundation.
According to the foundation's website, Sondland's wife serves on the boards of the Pratt School of Engineering Board of Visitors at Duke University, the Portland Art Museum Board of Directors and Executive Committee, the Jesuit High School Board of Trustees, and the Elevate Oregon Board of Directors.
Sondland has made his fortune in commercial real estate and hotels.
A native of Mercer Island, Washington, where his parents ran a dry cleaning business, Sondland started his career as a commercial real-estate broker in Seattle before starting a Portland-based hotel company.
According to Axios, he was also a founding partner of Portland- and NYC-based private equity firm Aspen Capital.
Sondland is "a major civic and power player in Oregon," according to the Seattle Times.
In the 1980s, Sondland founded a chain of luxury hotels called Provenance Hotels, which today has 14 locations in cities like Portland, Seattle, Boston, Palm Springs, Nashville, and New Orleans.
Sondland entered the hotel business while he was working in commercial real estate in Seattle in the 1980s, according to Skift. In 1985, he bought a bankrupt hotel, renovated it, and reopened it as a luxury hotel — the start of what would become Provenance Hotels.
Sondland was CEO of the hotel group from 2002 to 2018, when he was appointed ambassador to the EU. In his financial disclosure to the State Department, Sondland said he would retain a passive investment in the company and continue to receive his share of equity profits.
According to the Portland Business Journal, Sondland's wife, Katherine Durant, was listed as chairman of Provenance Hotels on the company website's "Who We Are" page as recently as October. All information appears to have since been removed from the page.
Provenance Hotels did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment regarding its current chairman, and Sondland's attorney did not respond to a request for comment concerning his current involvement in the company.
In recent weeks, Provenance Hotels have come under fire on Yelp, receiving one- and two-star reviews referencing the ambassador, The Daily Beast reported.
As the Daily Beast reported, a two-star review left on October 22 for the Revolution Hotel in Boston reads: "If you're looking for a hotel owned by a Trump supporter who gave the campaign a million dollars in exchange for an ambassadorship that he's unqualified for so he can extort foreign leaders into attacking fellow Americans, look no further ..."
Between 2016 and June 2018, Sondland was the manager of a Portland-based LLC that owned a Lear jet, according to his financial disclosures.
The New York Times recently reported that before he became ambassador, Sondland "ferr[ied] presidential candidates around the northwest in his Lear jet."
According to the Wall Street Journal, Sondland sold the jet when he took the ambassador job.
Sondland is a major Republican political donor.
Since the 1980s, he's given at least $446,000 to federal candidates and groups, including John McCain, Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, and Jeb Bush, according to OpenSecrets.
The diplomat owns homes in Portland and Gearhart, Oregon, and Palm Springs, California, according to a report from Oregon Public Broadcasting.
His home in Portland's upscale West Hills neighborhood is worth an estimated $2.2 million, according to OPB.
Sondland also has a government-provided home in Brussels, where he is based in his role as ambassador to the EU.
In October, Sondland came under fire for spending more than $1 million in taxpayer funds on personal home renovations to his residences in both Washington, DC, and Brussels, Business Insider's Grace Panetta reported.
The renovations included $400,000 for renovations to the kitchen of his home in Brussels and $95,000 for the installation of an "outdoor living pod/pergola" at his home in DC.
In his May 2019 financial disclosures, Sondland reported holding between $15,000 and $50,000 in a bank in Belgium.
Sondland also has an art collection worth between $5 million and $25 million.
According to OPB, Sondland lent some pieces from his collection to President George W. Bush to be used at the White House.
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