LIHUE — Several small land parcels located within the boundaries of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 700-acre estate on the North Shore will be sold at a public auction next month.
A Fifth Circuit judge in October ordered a public auction of the land parcels, an outcome sought by a quiet title lawsuit initiated by Carlos Andrade, a retired University of Hawaii professor who owns about a 25-percent stake in the lots, according to a recent article in The Guardian.
A notice in the Feb. 14 issue of The Garden Island announced a partition sale on March 22 for four “separate properties, all kuleanas within a larger parcel.”
County property tax records list Andrade as the owner and show they are located within the property purchased by Zuckerberg in 2014.
The four kuleana have been the subject of a controversial dispute that has pitted the world’s fifth-richest man against hundreds of descendants of Manuel Rapozo, a Portuguese emigrant to Kauai, who acquired the land in the 19th century.
“This has been quite painful for the extended family, but we intend to resist and not be ashamed if we lose,” said Wayne Rapozo, a London-based corporate lawyer who is a descendant of Manuel Rapozo’s brother and is helping to coordinate and finance the legal battle against Andrade’s quiet title suit.
In a statement made via email Monday, Rapozo continued, “We want to be seen as doing the right thing for us the extended family and for Kauai and Hawaii. In many ways we view our battle as a fight for all of Hawaii’s traditional extended families and for fair play and truth in land and application of the rule of law in Hawaii.”
Zuckerberg published an op-ed in TGI in January 2017, promising to drop the quiet title suits for the properties owned by companies he controls, and a spokesperson for Zuckerberg later said his client will not own “any interest in any of the kuleana involved in the quiet title action.”
Prospective bidders can view the property March 3, between 9 a.m. and noon by going to the Pilaa gate near the intersection of Koolau Road and Kuhio Highway in Kilauea.
According to the TGI commissioner’s sale notice, “each prospective bidder shall be accompanied and driven to the property to be viewed in a four-wheel drive vehicle.”
The auction will held March 22 at noon on the steps of the Fifth Circuit Court Building, 3970 Kaana Street, Lihue.
