The owner of the building that housed an illegal social club where 87 people were killed in a fire has been accused in lawsuits by his brother and sister of ruining the family real estate business. The Daily News and The New York Times reported in their Sunday editions that the siblings of Alex DiLorenzo III accuse him of making speculative commodities investments, buying failing businesses and acquired buildings in need of repairs. Alex DiLorenzo last week surrendered to authorities on 43 arrest warrants for outstanding building code violations, including one violation at the Happy Land social club in the Bronx, where the fire occurred last month. The other 42 concerned citations at various Manhattan properties. DiLorenzo's brother, Marc, and sister, Lisa, sued to wrest control of two family partnerships which have about 250 holdings valued in court papers at as much as $1.2 billion, the Times said. At the family's request, the pending case has been sealed. In one decision before the sealing, Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Harold Baer credited Alex DiLorenzo with increasing the success of the family business. Baer in December rejected Marc DiLorenzo's motion to have Alex removed as head of the business. Among the non-real estate transactions questioned in the lawsuit, the News said, was Alex DiLorenzo's involvement in a firm that began to sell frozen cow embryos and bull semen to Third World countries. Five brokers who have worked with the DiLorenzo family said Alex failed to follow his late father's pattern of buying established, expensive properties, the Times said. The DiLorenzo business was left in trust to the three children when their father died in 1975. Alex DiLorenzo administered the trust. Several years ago, Marc DiLorenzo, under terms allowed in the trust, asked that the partnership be broken into three equal parts and distributed. Alex DiLorenzo refused and his siblings sued.
