Swig is no stranger to controversy or the courtroom.

In the 2000s, he built his real-estate investment company, Swig Equities, into a major Manhattan office owner, amassing a portfolio of roughly a dozen office buildings, primarily in lower Manhattan, that were together worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But when the financial crisis hit, Swig's empire frayed. 

Several of Swig's business relationships devolved into headline-grabbing acrimony and litigation. In one heated meeting, for instance, a partner of Swig's became so infuriated, he grabbed an ice bucket and slammed it against Swig's shoulder, according to articles at the time.

In a contentious battle in divorce court that began in 2010, Swig's now ex-wife Elizabeth Macklowe alleged in court documents that he "motioned" to strike her in their 5 1/2-bathroom co-op at 740 Park Ave. while in a drunken rage during the depths of his financial travails in 2009.

He owed creditors tens of millions of dollars and sold off many of the office buildings he had invested in.

Despite this, Swig continues to list some of those buildings, including 44 Wall St., 80 Broad St., and 5 Hanover Square, in his profile page on the website of Brown Harris Stevens as properties he "has purchased and/or is in the process of developing," when, in fact, he hasn't owned them for years.

Swig said to Insider that he posted those properties as one would list past jobs on their résumé and said he continued to own other office buildings in Manhattan, including 48 Wall St., 110 William St., and 7 Hanover Square. 

The owners of 110 William St., a partnership between Pacific Oak Capital Advisors and Savanna, said Swig had no ownership interest in that property.

A person with direct knowledge of the ownership structure of 7 Hanover Square, meanwhile, told Insider that it was possible the Swig family had a small stake in that building but that the interest would have been structured decades ago and didn't involve Kent.

Kirk MacDonald, a principal at MacDonald & Cie, an investment firm that owns the 33-story, 320,000-square-foot office building at 48 Wall St., told Insider that Swig had owned a small minority stake in that property years ago with a handful of other real-estate investors. But in the aftermath of the financial crisis, Swig and the other investors were unable to make required capital calls to fund the building's operations and upkeep and were "wiped out," MacDonald said. 

MacDonald said that he continued to be friends with Swig and that Swig had been forced to pay back enormous debts to lenders and other creditors that were incurred during his financial difficulties a decade ago. 

"He has worked himself out of probably $120 million of debt, and he has done a good job of it against all odds," MacDonald said. "There's not much left that he owes, and he's paying it back regularly."

Swig told Insider that the sum he has had to repay in recent years was "closer to $130 million."