The Sultan of Swank : Brunei Ruler Who Purchased the Beverly Hills Hotel Appears to Be as Mysterious as He Is Wealthy

Like an aftershock from last week’s earthquake, the Sultan of Brunei sent tremors throughout Los Angeles Wednesday with his reported purchase of the legendary Beverly Hills Hotel from tycoon Marvin Davis.

The sale, announced Tuesday, was the latest display of nearly unlimited wealth by a mysterious Pacific potentate who, at age 41, may well be the richest man in the world. The $185 million he is reportedly paying for the pink, 260-room hotel--or about $50 million more than oilman Davis paid when he bought the Hollywood landmark just last December--could be pocket change for a man whose personal assets were recently estimated by Fortune magazine to be $25 billion.

Palace Surprised at News

News of the hotel purchase caught Haji Ampuan Saptu, minister counsellor and director of information at the sultan’s palace, by surprise. “You will have to ask the Sultan,” he said late Wednesday. When asked how to reach the young monarch, he said, ‘Oh my goodness no, that would not be possible.”

Lack of knowledge about the man who apparently wants to be a Hollywood mogul caused some apprehension among those who frequent the hotel and its famed Polo Lounge, where Davis habitually seated himself at Table 3 and where a modest “power breakfast” can cost $50.

“I just hope the sultan doesn’t turn it into another Caesars Palace,” said Jane Nathanson, a real estate broker who lives two blocks from the hotel, referring to the gaudy Las Vegas hotel. It was a sentiment generally echoed by others who live near or patronize the hotel.

Elaine Young, also a real estate broker who said she has had lunch at the hotel every day of the week for 30 years and frequently goes there for drinks, fretted, “I just hope they keep my table for me.”

Although the young ruler of Brunei first gained widespread notice in this country when it was reported last year that he had donated $10 million to help the contras in Nicaragua, he remains a shadowy figure. Even in his own country--a small, oil-rich kingdom on the north coast of Borneo--what happens behind palace walls is largely unknown, according to various reports.

What is well-known is that those walls surround a $400-million, 1,800-room mansion--larger by far than the hotel he just bought. And that his personal possessions also include a large collection of cars, private jets and polo ponies.

Rich in Another Way

And the sultan is rich in yet another way. His full name is Kebawah Duli Yang Maha Mulia Paduka Seri Baginda Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Muizzaddin Waddaulah, or, more commonly, Hassanal Bolkiah. Nothing is known about his family except that he has a teen-age son who navigates the nation’s 500 miles of roads in a Ferrari.

Personal glimpses of the man and his life style come from a select group of Americans--expert polo players who have been invited to test themselves and their ponies against the sultan’s team.

Dallas entrepreneur Norman Brinker, who went to Brunei in 1981, remembers the sultan as “a very unassuming, very quiet, extremely hospitable man.” He is also a devout Muslim who does not drink, he added. (However, some Brunei Muslims reportedly have been dissatisfied with religious practice in their country and have called for stricter observance of Islamic law than that practiced by the sultan.)

“The sultan leads a very quiet life,” Brinker said, partly “because it’s a small island and there’s not a lot to do on it.”

Brinker estimated that a banquet hall he saw in the sultan’s palace could easily hold 6,000 people.

The sultan is a “very aggressive polo player who is a good club player but not world-class,” Brinker said, adding, “but he can get in the game and be very avid about it.

Bob Moore, a Cadillac dealer in Oklahoma City who went to Brunei with other polo players last year, remembers being “very impressed.”

‘Fantastic’ Life Style

The sultan’s life style is “fantastic,” he said. When the sultan flies to Singapore for a polo match, he takes the seats out of the rear of his Boeing 727 to accommodate his polo ponies.

Moore recalled, however, that although the “sultan loved to hang around the polo field with his guests” he was always watched closely by armed guards and never traveled around the island without an armed escort.

Brunei, a former British protectorate spread over about 2,250-square-miles, is modeled after a Middle Eastern sheikdom with political power in the nation of 220,000 resting solely in the hands of the sultan. Its citizens receive free medical treatment and education and enjoy a generally high standard of living protected from fluctuations in oil prices by the sultan’s shrewd investments in other financial markets.

The Beverly Hills Hotel is not his first venture in that field. In 1985, he bought London’s elegant 56-year-old Dorchester Hotel and has reportedly invested in its restoration, not its modernization.

“He understands the history of the structure and the style in which it was originally conceived,” reported Dorchester manager Seamus McManus.

“The sultan is personally involved in the hotel’s management. He has improved many of the suites and public ballrooms, and next year a major renovation is planned for most of the 282 rooms.”

Hassanal became the 29th ruler of the tiny sultanate in 1967 when his father plucked him out of Britain’s Sandhurst Royal Military Academy a few weeks before graduation.

The father, Omar Ali Saifuddin III, remained the power behind the throne and the head of the family--the Seri Begawan, which means “renowed and venerable elder-- while the son became a polo-playing playboy. When Britain under the new Labor government prepared to withdraw its forces east of Suez, Omar abdicated in hopes of persuading his protectors not to cut all their links with a country led by 21-year-old ex-Sandhurst student. The ploy worked and in 1971 Britain agreed to keep responsibility for Brunei’s defense and foreign affairs if the sultanate would look after its internal affairs. Omar died in September, 1986, and Hassanal has moved fairly slowly to modernize his nation.

A Shabby Capital

Bandra Seri Begawan, Brunei’s capital, remains a rather shabby Islamic backwater. The massive Omar Ali Saifuddin mosque and the magnificent Nurul Iman palace are the town’s only large structures. The bulk of the town’s Malays live in wooden houses built on stilts near the shore of the South China Sea.

The town’s major boulevards fill with cars precisely at 4 p.m. when the country’s bureaucrats leave their offices. At 7 p.m. high-powered Toyota sports cars race among several restaurants. By 9 p.m. even the rich and famous are back home watching U. S. television programs bought from Singapore.

Western diplomats believe the sultan has “an obsession” about limiting Brunei’s development, fearing it would bring social and economic turmoil, and destroy the power his family has enjoyed for nearly 500 years.

No Financial Problems

Yet Brunei remains one of the few nations in the world with no financial problems. Even if the oil and gas stopped flowing tomorrow, its people could live quite comfortably off just the investment income from its estimated $20 billion foreign exchange reserves.

But worries about communism persist. And it was apparently those fears that contributed to Hassanal’s response to the Reagan Administration’s request for help in Nicaragua. In August, 1986, envoys of the sultan met with Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliot Abrams in London. Looking for funds to tide over the contras during the two-year ban on U. S. congressional aid, Abrams supplied the envoys with a Swiss bank account number provided by Lt. Col. Oliver North.

The subsequent deposit of $10 million by Hassanal, mistakenly sent to a Swiss businessman, never reached the contras, but made headlines across the world and provided the nation of Brunei, which has no daily newspaper and only limited political debate, with one of the few close looks at that world.

Only once in the past did the Sultans of Brunei seriously consider democracy. The result was a 1962 election victory by an opposition party that immediately demanded an abolition of the British protectorate, abolition of the royal family and annexation by Indonesia. Hassanal’s father responded by calling in British Gurkhas from Singapore.

Elections have since been banned by emergency regulations that remain in force today.

Since presiding over Brunei’s independence from Britain four years ago, Hassanal Bolkiah has had to balance the interests of Brunei’s 45,000 ethnic Chinese who dominate the retail marketplace, the Malays who want more job opportunities and the 29,000 expatriates brought in to modernize the economy.

Since the death of his father, Hassanal has reduced his polo playing and become more vocal in support of Islamic values. He has not, however, reduced his trips to London, which he visits at least five times a year, often for periods as long as a month.

Hassanal’s purchase of the Beverly Hills Hotel is expected to result in an increased number of visits to Los Angeles. It was unclear whether the sultan has ever visited this city.

Times staff writers David DeVoss, Nikki Finke, Marylouise Oates and Jeannine Stein contributed to this story.