By Michael Cervieri

When Donald Trump and the estate of his deceased Japanese partner, Hideki Yokoi, sold the Empire State Building in March, a decade long battle between real estate tycoons drew to an end.

The ownership battle for the building began in 1991. It continues today.

Flamboyant, competitive, and at times downright nasty, a cast of characters that included Trump, Yokoi, Leona Helmsley, Peter Malkin, Yokoi's daughter, Kiiko Nakahara, and her husband, Jean-Paul Renoir, fought through much of the 90s for control of the building.

The winner in this high stakes game of real estate poker would hold the world’s most famous building and its complex 114-year lease which, when combined, is worth upwards of a billion dollars, according to real estate analysts.

Before the game was finished, prosecutors from around the world threw leading players into prisons, a family’s empire crashed and burned, a period passed where the very ownership of the Empire State Building raised more questions than it answered and the whole struggle became Page One grist for the tabloid mill.

The troubles began in 1991 when Prudential Trust, which owned the building, decided to sell. Their asking price was $40 million, but because of the 114-year lease which was held by Leona Helmsley and Peter Malkin, whoever bought the building would only receive $1.97 million per year on their investment.

With returns that were only slightly better than those on a savings account, who would want to buy what, by then, was viewed as a second-tier office building?

Japanese trophy hunters for one, and in the mid-1980s two major economic events took place that facilitated a Japanese spending spree: the U.S. dollar fell dramatically against the yen and Japanese real estate prices skyrocketed.

It was in this atmosphere that Hideki Yokoi tapped his daughter, Nakahara, to begin his hunt.

Traveling through Europe, Nakahara photographed castles and chateaus that would interest her father, according to Mitchell Pacelle, author of Empire: A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon. If Yokoi liked what he saw, he'd wire money back to his daughter. Back and forth it went, photos to Japan, money back to Nakahara until, all told, the two had purchased five castles and 13 chateaus in Scotland, England, France and Spain.

With that spree done, Yokoi set his sights on the United States and in 1991 found his grand prize: the Empire State Building. Yokoi instructed his daughter to buy it.

Next: The Making of a Deal, or Two, or Three or Four