Is he leasing them the properties at fair market rates? If so he might be preventing gouging by not forcing we work to bid against the rest of the market.
If it were strategically important for the company the company should have bought the properties. It's a direct conflict of interest - and one that has been serious enough that they've ended up having to build an entire corporate strategy to deal with. Also, this is not the only conflict of interest: WeWork bought part of an artificial surfing wave pool in 2016 and the only reason anyone can find to do that is the CEO likes surfing.