Черная вдова Лили Сафра: фантастическая история долларовой миллиардерши, чье имя носит галерея в Лувре.

Как богатейшая женщина Монако пережила четырех мужей и стала подозреваемой в убийстве?
#психология #НаблюденияИзЖизни
#воспитание #семья #школа #моббинг #буллинг #учителя
Официальное объяснение смерти банкира-мультимиллиардера Эдмона Сафра, который 40 лет назад назад задохнулся в запертой ванной комнате своего пентхауса в Монте-Карло, заключается в том, что одна из медсестер Сафра устроила пожар, чтобы героически спасти своего работодателя. Но почему банкир был без своих охранников, обученных Моссадом? Если сообщения о втором пожаре правдивы, кто его зажег? И было ли в теле Сафры две пули? Прислушиваясь к перешептываниям представителей джет-сета и следя за враждой между братьями Сафры и его вдовой Лили, автор исследует опасную тайну Ривьеры.
3 декабря 1999 года в Монте-Карло (Монако) банкир-мультимиллиардер Эдмон Ж. Сафра вместе с одной из своих медсестер умер от удушья в запертой, похожей на бункер ванной комнате в результате пожара, охватившего его пентхаус, расположенный на вершине здания, где находился Национальный банк Республики Нью-Йорк, который он окончательно договорился продать несколькими днями ранее. По первым данным, двое злоумышленников в капюшонах проникли в квартиру, которая была прочной, как крепость, и зарезали мужчину-медсестру. Странная смерть попала в заголовки газет и вызвала шок в банковском сообществе, а также в княжестве Монако, вероятно, самой безопасной и жестко контролируемой налоговой гавани в мире для очень богатых людей. На каждые 100 из 30 000 жителей здесь приходится один полицейский. В Монте-Карло и шагу нельзя ступить, чтобы не попасть под наблюдение камер видеонаблюдения, которые стоят на улицах, в подземных переходах, в холлах отелей и в казино.
Странная смерть попала в заголовки газет и вызвала шок в банковском сообществе, а также в княжестве Монако, вероятно, самой безопасной и жестко контролируемой налоговой гавани в мире для очень богатых людей. На каждые 100 из 30 000 жителей здесь приходится один полицейский. В Монте-Карло и шагу нельзя ступить, чтобы не оказаться под наблюдением камер видеонаблюдения, которые установлены на улицах, в подземных переходах, в холлах отелей и в казино. Через три дня после смерти Сафра Даниэль Серде, генеральный прокурор и главный обвинитель Монако, объявил, что мужчина-медик по имени Тед Махер из Стормвилля, штат Нью-Йорк, признался в том, что устроил пожар, в котором погиб его работодатель, чтобы добиться расположения банкира. По словам Сердета, Махер устроил пожар в мусорной корзине, пытаясь привлечь к себе внимание. «Он хотел стать героем», - сказал Сердет. Злоумышленников в капюшонах не было, а ножевые ранения в живот и бедро Махера были нанесены им самим». Сердет опубликовал для прессы заявление о Махере, в котором говорится, что в момент пожара он был очень возбужден, «психологически хрупок и находился под воздействием лекарств». Серде заключил: «С этого момента мы можем с уверенностью исключить все [предположения] о каком-либо международном заговоре». Марк Боннан, адвокат вдовы Сафра, заявил в журнале Time:
«То, что Махер нестабилен, мы поняли только после несчастного случая». Проклятие Теда Махера, низшего человека на тотемном столбе медперсонала, началось. В мгновение ока дело было завязано аккуратным бантиком: виновный был под стражей, а княжество Монако снова было в безопасности.
С самого начала мало кто верил, что история так проста. Все казалось слишком простым, слишком быстро разрешимым. «Монако хочет все замять», - говорили наблюдатели. «Русская мафия», - предполагали одни. Другие шептали: «Палестинские террористы». Хотя имя Сафры мало известно широкой публике, оно очень заметно в мире международного банкинга, филантропии и общества. Несколько финансистов описывали мне Сафру как самого блестящего банкира своего времени. В любой момент во время катастрофы он мог бы спастись, но, по слухам, он так боялся быть убитым злоумышленниками, которые, как ему сказали, были в его доме, что отказался выйти из запертой ванной, несмотря на мольбы пожарных и полиции. Он положил мокрые полотенца вдоль нижней части двери ванной, но безрезультатно. Когда через два часа спасатели наконец попали в ванную, они обнаружили миллиардера мертвым, его тело почернело от копоти, кожа обгорела. Его глаза выскочили из орбит. Рядом лежал мобильный телефон, по которому было сделано несколько звонков. Вместе с Сафрой была мертва одна из восьми его медсестер, Вивиан Торренте, американка филиппинского происхождения. У нее также был сотовый телефон, который Тед Махер дал ей, чтобы она вызвала помощь. Пока не сообщается, что шея Торренте была предположительно раздавлена.
Одно можно сказать с уверенностью: У Эдмона Сафра, специализировавшегося на частном банковском обслуживании богатых клиентов и, как говорили, знавшего «все секреты финансовой планеты», были свои враги. Несмотря на то что он создавал образ респектабельного человека среди очень богатых и влиятельных людей, за ним тянулся шлейф скандалов и подозрений. Его обвиняли в том, что он отмывал деньги для панамского диктатора Мануэля Норьеги, а также для колумбийских наркокартелей. А его банк и частный самолет якобы использовались для перемещения денег и персонала во время скандала с иранской контрой. Слухи о причастности Сафры были признаны частью клеветнической кампании American Express, и Сафра в итоге добился публичных извинений и выплаты компенсации в размере 8 миллионов долларов, которые он пожертвовал на благотворительность. Тем не менее, его ближайший друг в Нью-Йорке сказал: «Эдмонд не был хористом».
Еще один несомненный факт - Сафра был одержим идеей безопасности. Широко сообщалось, что он чувствовал угрозу и считал себя человеком, за которым охотятся. Еще до того, как в 1998 и 1999 годах он сотрудничал с ФБР, разоблачая международную операцию русской мафии по отмыванию денег, он опасался за свою безопасность. Каждый год он тратил миллионы на охрану себя, своей жены, ее детей и внуков. В каждой из своих многочисленных резиденций он жил практически в окружении частной армии. Пентхаус над его банком был перестроен с учетом новейших камер наблюдения и устройств безопасности. У него было 11 телохранителей с автоматами, многие из которых были ветеранами израильского Моссада. Они работали посменно и всегда были рядом с ним, что часто приводило в замешательство друзей, которым не нравилось, что каждый раз, когда они приходили в гости, их окружали вооруженные люди. Одна из главных загадок этого дела заключается в том, что ни один из охранников не был на дежурстве в ночь смерти Сафры. Они были направлены в Ла Леопольду, поместье Сафры в Вильфранш-сюр-Мер, в 20 минутах езды от Монте-Карло, одного из крупнейших выставочных центров на Ривьере. Вопрос без ответа или с недостаточным ответом: почему в момент смерти Сафра в пентхаусе не было ни одного охранника, который занимался бы тем, чему их учили, - защищал жизнь одного из самых богатых людей в мире?
В европейской прессе появились противоречивые сведения о последних днях Сафры. Итальянская газета La Stampa сообщила, что его видели в Кап д'Антиб с Борисом Березовским, российским олигархом, замешанным в скандале с «Аэрофлотом» в 1999 году, когда десятки миллионов долларов якобы были выведены из контролируемой государством авиакомпании. La Stampa сообщила, что Сафра также был замечен в ресторане отеля Martinez в Каннах в компании двух других россиян, с которыми он поссорился, после чего сердито ушел. Близкие к Сафре люди отвергают подобные истории, утверждая, что он был слишком болен и принимал слишком много лекарств, чтобы находиться в том или ином месте. 67-летний Сафра страдал от прогрессирующей болезни Паркинсона - он пожертвовал 50 миллионов долларов на создание нового фонда для медицинских исследований в этой области. В последний год его жизни, как заметили мне несколько его посетителей, он часто страдал паранойей и бредил, что они объясняли приемом тяжелых лекарств. Помимо восьми медсестер, в том числе Теда Махера, в доме круглосуточно дежурили четыре врача. К моменту пожара Махер проработал у Сафры чуть меньше четырех месяцев. Французский журнал Le Nouvel Observateur цитирует анонимного монакского адвоката: «Сафра осудил русскую мафию, и некоторые из его клиентов, которых это беспокоило, могли испугаться и использовать Махера. . . . Это не первый случай, когда бедную душу используют на службе у грандиозной преступной схемы».
Spotless & Brite, Inc., служба занятости, которая занималась делами медсестер и охранников, работающих у Сафры, расположенная в здании Republic Bank по адресу 452 Fifth Avenue в Нью-Йорке, предоставила Хайди и ее брату билеты в Ниццу в оба конца и машину с водителем в Монте-Карло. По словам Хайди, женщина из Spotless & Brite назвала Теда героем и сказала, что он был ранен ножом, пытаясь спасти мистера Сафра. Хайди думала, что встретится с мужем в больнице принцессы Грейс, где его раны лечат, но к моменту прибытия в Монако Теда уже арестовали, и ее отвезли в полицейский участок. Обратный билет на самолет был аннулирован. Она показывает мне записи из больницы принцессы Грейс, доказывающие, что, вопреки утверждениям Даниэля Серде, в организме Теда не было ни алкоголя, ни наркотиков. Ей не разрешили увидеться с мужем.
История, которую Хайди Махер рассказывает о «признании» Теда, сильно отличается от той, что появилась в Монако. Она говорит, что паспорт у нее забрали трое полицейских и показали Теду. Она говорит, что признание было вырвано у него в больнице и что в первые два дня пребывания там Теду сказали, что Эдмон Сафра все еще жив. Она говорит, что Тед зажег огонь в корзине для мусора, чтобы включить пожарную сигнализацию. Затем она показывает мне письмо, которое Сью Келли, член Палаты представителей США от Нью-Йорка, написала Его Светлости князю Ренье III:
. . . Мы считаем, что международные права человека и гражданские свободы этого американского гражданина и его семьи были явно нарушены». После того как Теда Махера связали по рукам и ногам, поставили катетер, изолировали, допрашивали и не давали спать в течение трех дней, его заставили подписать признание, написанное на французском языке без перевода на английский. Его жену, Хайди, также допрашивали в течение нескольких дней и держали под наблюдением полиции. . . . Ее схватили на улице, бросили в машину трое неизвестных людей в черном и отвезли в отель, где разгромили ее номер и багаж и забрали паспорт. Затем Теду показали паспорт его жены и пригрозили, что она не сможет вернуться к их трем детям, если он не подпишет документ с признанием в преступлении.
“The confession’s in French and Ted doesn’t speak French?,” I ask Heidi.
“He doesn’t speak French,” Heidi replies.
“What about the videotapes in the surveillance cameras?,” I say. “They don’t show any intruders.”
“The tapes have vanished,” she says. “The judge was given a blank tape and an old tape showing guests arriving at a party.” Subsequently, one of the original tapes has been discovered, but the authorities will not reveal what is on it.
The saga of Ted Maher, the 42-year-old male nurse who now sits in the Monaco prison on a charge of “voluntary fire setting leading to the death of two people,” is an interesting and serendipitous one. For 10 years he was a highly regarded neonatology nurse at Babies & Children’s Hospital, part of New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. Then, in a life-changing moment, he found an expensive camera that had been left behind by a patient who had been discharged. A source I talked to in Monaco who is familiar with the case said rather dramatically, “He was unable to read the sign of his own destiny.” Instead of turning the camera in to his superior or to the lost-and-found department, he removed the film and had it developed. He recognized the patient, a woman who had recently had twins. Her husband had taken the pictures of her and the babies. Through the hospital’s records, Maher was able to get the address of the couple, and he returned the camera and photos to them.
Their names were Harry and Laura Slatkin, and they were charmed and touched by Maher’s good deed. Their great friend Adriana Elia, who is the daughter of Lily Safra, Edmond’s widow, by her first husband, Mario Cohen, was also impressed by Maher. Harry Slatkin is the brother of Howard Slatkin, a New York decorator of palace-like interiors, who happens to be the favorite decorator of Lily Safra. On the side, Howard Slatkin has a successful scented-candle business, which Laura Slatkin runs. Howard Slatkin names his scented candles after various society ladies, such as Deeda Blair and C. Z. Guest.
It occurred to Adriana Elia that Ted Maher would make a perfect nurse for her stepfather. Maher was interviewed by a member of Safra’s staff, who offered him a salary of $600 a day, more money than he had ever earned. The nurses’ union at Columbia Presbyterian was about to go out on strike, which would have left Maher without an income. Moreover, he had incurred $60,000 in legal bills obtaining custody of a son by his first marriage. So he went on unpaid leave from the hospital and took the job Safra was offering. He had misgivings about moving to Monte Carlo, since he had a wife and three children, whom he hated to leave. Heidi Maher was briefly considered for a job on Safra’s nursing staff as well, but once it was discovered that the couple had three children, Heidi’s job offer was rescinded. In the end Ted went alone.
In the nearly four months he worked for Safra, Maher reportedly developed a hearty dislike for the chief nurse on Safra’s staff, Sonia Casiano. After having been a well-respected employee at Columbia Presbyterian, he was suddenly the most junior member of the team. He found himself having to take orders from people whose credentials were less impressive than his. And there was definitely a growing strain between Maher and Casiano. However, Safra was fond of Maher, and Maher was fond of Safra. Maher had scored extra points with both Edmond and his wife, Lily, by fixing an air conditioner, and the fact that Maher had been a Green Beret also impressed Edmond. A lot of people in the banking world were suspicious of Safra, but he had warm and affectionate relations with those who attended to him—assistants, servants, nurses, guards. These staff members had less affection for Safra’s wife, who disliked having so many nurses and guards underfoot all the time. The fire Maher allegedly started in the wastebasket was lit with one of Howard Slatkin’s scented candles. Heidi Maher told me there were always scented candles around Safra, because he was sometimes incontinent and had chronic diarrhea. Two nurses had to help him from his bed to the bathroom, which had been designed like a bunker so that the family could escape there in case of an attack. In the long run, its perfection as a refuge is what killed him.
As prisons go, the one in Monaco is pretty deluxe, from what I hear. I was not allowed to visit Ted Maher when I was there in July, but I was told he has a nice view. He can watch the boat traffic on the Mediterranean, and on clear nights the reflection of the moon ripples on the water. Below him are well-tended gardens. There are 41 cells, and in July there were 22 prisoners. Most of them were in for drug crimes.
The jet-set gossip started the day after the funeral. Le Monde reported that two Arab guests at the Hôtel Hermitage, which abuts Safra’s penthouse, had been questioned “because of their criminal histories,” but had been released and were no longer under suspicion. The deep hatred that had long existed between Lily Safra and the brothers of her late husband, Joseph and Moise Safra, who live in Brazil, came to the surface for all to see. The once very close Safra brothers—Syrian Jews born in Lebanon, where their father, Jacob, had established a bank—were not close at the time Edmond died, and Joseph and Moise blamed Lily for that. According to sources close to the family, the brothers claimed that Lily kept Edmond isolated from them as his condition worsened, and that their telephone calls were not relayed to Edmond by secretaries. By the time Joseph and Moise arrived in Monte Carlo from Brazil, the casket had been sealed and they were not able to see their brother’s body.
Lily Safra further outraged the siblings by changing the burial site from Mount Herzl, in Israel, where a space had been reserved, to the Veyrier Jewish cemetery just outside Geneva, Switzerland, where Edmond and Lily had another home. So bitter was the feeling between the widow and her brothers-in-law that she did not want them to be present at the Hekhall Haness synagogue for the religious service. The synagogue was placed under strict police surveillance, and armed officers prevented journalists and photographers from getting near the funeral. The guest list and seating for the service were prepared by Lily. Seven hundred attended—or a thousand, depending on which paper you read—including such celebrated names as Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, who gave one of the eulogies, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, former U.N. secretary-general Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, and Hubert de Givenchy, the French couturier, who had been Lily Safra’s favorite designer until his retirement. No member of Monaco’s ruling family attended, a fact that was remarked on by many people, since Safra was considered the most important person in Monte Carlo after Prince Rainier.
I know several people who attended the service, and heard their stories afterward. The Safra brothers could not be turned away at the synagogue, and security guards carried chairs to the front for them, seating them prominently for all to see. “It was like a wall of ice,” one person said to me, describing the feeling in the air. The main eulogy was given by Sir John Bond, the group chairman of HSBC Holdings, the bank that had bought Safra’s Republic New York Corporation, who had met Safra only a limited number of times, in connection with the sale. At the end of the service Joseph and Moise elbowed their way in among the pallbearers and helped carry the coffin to the hearse. They made no attempt to attend the reception held later by Lily. Not everyone asked to the funeral was asked to the house afterward.
Several weeks later, a memorial service for Safra was held in New York at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, on Central Park West at 70th Street. Again it was by invitation only, and again not everyone was asked back to the Safra apartment on Fifth Avenue, a fact that miffed several grand ladies of the city. Among the speakers at the service were Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; James Wolfensohn, head of the World Bank; Neil Rudenstine, president of Harvard University; and Shimon Peres, former prime minister of Israel. Lily read a letter written to Edmond by her granddaughter, which was very moving. By sheer happenstance, I attended a dinner that night at Swifty’s restaurant on the Upper East Side, and 5 of the 12 guests arrived there after having attended the memorial service. For two hours they talked of nothing else: “Lily said she gave the key to her chief of security at La Leopolda, but the Monaco police put him in handcuffs.” “Lily said she had Edmond’s body placed on her bed afterward, and his face was black with soot.” “Lily said that the male nurse gambled.” “Lily said there were two fires.”
That was the first time I heard that there had been two fires, though since then I have heard it often. And therein, at least in my opinion, lies the second big question in this mystery: Who might have lit a second fire? A lady I know in Paris, who used to be a great friend of Lily Safra’s, told me at the Café Flore that an incendiary object had been thrown into the penthouse. Even if that was only her surmise, it might explain the raging inferno that erupted.
Lily Safra, a Brazilian of Russian Jewish heritage, is by far the most colorful figure in this story. Now in her mid-60s, she has had a fascinating and eventful life, rife with both splendor and tragedy. She is these days one of the richest women in the world. She came into $3 billion after Edmond’s death, and she had possessed a fortune before their marriage, courtesy of her second husband. She has suffered greatly in her personal life. Before the most recent tragedy, she had lost both her son Claudio and her three-year-old grandson in an automobile accident.
I had never met either of the Safras, but I had seen them on certain grand occasions in New York at the Metropolitan Museum and the Metropolitan Opera. Their wealth floated like an aura around them. Edmond Safra was a dignified, bald man of stocky build and medium height, more at ease in conferences about financial matters with world leaders than at society functions, where his glamorous wife was the attention grabber. With her slightly foreign manner, her marvelous clothes from the couture in Paris, and her spectacular jewels, Lily Safra has the presence and personality of a diva. One account I read of her youth said that her father was a British railroad worker named Watkins, who immigrated to Brazil, where Lily was born. Her first husband, Mario Cohen, was an Argentinean multimillionaire manufacturer of nylon stockings, whom she married when she was 19, and with whom she had three children—a daughter, Adriana, and two sons, Edouardo and Claudio. During the marriage they lived part of the time in Uruguay. After their divorce she married a Brazilian, Alfredo “Freddy” Greenberg—he later changed the name to Monteverde—who had fallen madly in love with her. Monteverde was the very rich owner of a chain of electronics stores. There is an adopted son from that marriage, named Carlos Monteverde, who seems not to participate in family matters. After Monteverde’s surprising suicide, Lily inherited a fortune estimated at $230 million, which she put into the hands of Edmond Safra, head of Banco Safra in Brazil but already destined for bigger things on an international scale.
Safra, then in his early 40s, had never married. His brothers often urged him to take a wife and have children so that the family could carry out its dream of having a bank that would last a thousand years. Safra always said he was worried that a woman would marry him only for his money. Lily Monteverde, however, had a fortune of her own, which set her apart. A family friend told me, “Joseph begged Edmond not to marry Lily.” Lily Monteverde was definitely not the woman Joseph and Moise had in mind for their beloved brother. The suicide of her second husband had been investigated twice by police, although nothing untoward was discovered. It also bothered the brothers that Lily was past the age of childbearing and would bring with her children of her own. They succeeded in talking Edmond out of the marriage, and that was the beginning of the enmity between Lily and Edmond’s brothers.
Edmond Safra returned to New York, where he had an apartment over his New York bank. Jeffrey Keil, who worked for him for 26 years, told me Edmond was brokenhearted to have lost Lily. He said Safra almost never left the building where he lived and worked. Then, in another dramatic episode unknown to most of her friends, Lily married her third husband in Acapulco in January 1972 and separated from him two months later. He was a 35-year-old Moroccan-born English businessman named Samuel H. Bendahan. The marriage surfaced when she applied for Monegasque citizenship; all past marriages had to be listed. If, as some think, Lily hoped the marriage would make Edmond realize what he had lost, it had the desired effect. He was soon begging her to marry him, and a year later she divorced Bendahan. Bendahan brought a suit against her and Safra, claiming that she had reneged on an agreement to pay him $250,000, but the suit was thrown out of court. The newspapers referred to her as the heiress to a chain of discount stores. Lily in turn charged Bendahan with extortion, but that case was dismissed as well.
The marriage of Edmond and Lily Safra took place in 1976. A Brazilian friend who knew both parties described the union to me as “the irresistible combination of a lady with a past and a man with a future.” A 600-page pre-nuptial agreement was reportedly drawn up—one colleague jokingly called it a merger—but the marriage turned out to be a successful one. It is an interesting fact that Edmond and Lily Safra’s Monegasque citizenship papers came through the day before he was killed. The sale of his Republic New York Corporation and Safra Republic Holdings had been approved by shareholders just days before that. Edmond had been so eager for the approval of the sale to go through that at the last minute he lowered the price by $450 million, a totally uncharacteristic thing for him to do, according to the European press. The New York Post reported in its financial pages: “The merger—originally worth $10.3 billion, now valued at $9.9 billion—had been delayed by allegations that a major client of Republic’s securities division committed a $1 billion fraud.” It broke Safra’s heart to sell his bank. He had wanted it to last for a millennium, but he was ill, and his brother Joseph, who had his own bank in Brazil, had declined to take it over. Safra’s great disappointment was that he had never had children of his own to whom he could hand over the reins.
There are probably not 200 people in the world today who live at such a level of grandeur as the Safras did over the last 20 years. They had a vast apartment in one of the finest buildings on Fifth Avenue in New York, as well as a spare apartment in the Pierre hotel, staffed and exquisitely decorated, for visiting friends to use. There were also homes in London, Paris, and Geneva, as well as the duplex penthouse over the bank in Monte Carlo and—the jewel in the crown—La Leopolda, one of the two most fabled houses on the French Riviera. I wrote about the other, La Fiorentina—which was built by the frequently widowed Lady Kenmare, whom Noël Coward nicknamed Lady Killmore—in Vanity Fair in March 1991. La Leopolda was planned at the turn of the century by the King of Belgium for his mistress, and was built by British architect Ogden Codman Jr., who was for a time the best friend and collaborator of Edith Wharton. More recently, La Leopolda was owned by the legendary jet-set figure and auto tycoon Gianni Agnelli, who, for a time, shared the villa with Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman during their sexy romance. The Safras added a landing pad for their helicopter and quarters for their Mossad guards. They reportedly also constructed an enormous underground habitable bunker that could serve as a bomb shelter. Everyone who has dined and danced at the villa raves about its beauty.
The Safras’ first foray into the big league of international society was their famous ball at La Leopolda in 1988, which was attended by such members of the crème de la crème as Prince Rainier and Princess Caroline of Monaco, Princess Firyal of Jordan, Christina Onassis, and a lot of Rothschilds. People I have spoken to who were at the ball get misty-eyed at the memory of its perfection. There was one gaffe, however. The name of Lily’s great friend Jerome Zipkin, the late famous walker of such important ladies as Nancy Reagan and Betsy Bloomingdale, who had helped put Lily across in New York, was inadvertently left off the guest list, and he made such a scene with the guards at the gates of La Leopolda that Rolls-Royces and limousines were backed up for miles on the Moyenne Corniche.
he notoriously snobbish social critic John Fairchild, for years the publisher of W and Women’s Wear Daily, wrote about what he called “the Safras’ meteoric rise to social power. They have taken the Riviera, Southampton, New York, the Metropolitan Opera, Geneva—all in a space of five years. What’s next?”
Lily Safra knows about 18th-century French furniture the way Candy Spelling knows about diamonds. So abundant is her collection of the finest of this furniture that a warehouse is necessary to hold the overflow from her many residences. Edmond Safra was once quoted as saying, “If instead of furniture I had bought paintings of the same quality, I would have made a more considerable fortune.” It has been sworn to me by a reliable source that Howard Slatkin’s re-decoration of Lily’s bedroom at La Leopolda—not including the 18th-century French furniture, which she already possessed—cost $2 million.
Lily Safra is famous for the extravagant gifts she gives. One year she sent Manolo Blahnik shoes to all her friends, after having a secretary call to get their sizes. Eleanor Lambert, the nonagenarian doyenne of American fashion, told me, “Lily sent me a shahtoosh before anyone ever had one.” Doctors who arrived from New York to treat Edmond in Monte Carlo or at La Leopolda always flew home with large gift packages. When her friend Zipkin stayed with her at the Safras’ Grosvenor Square apartment in London, a green Rolls-Royce and chauffeur were at his beck and call full-time. He visited so often that the guest towels in his bathroom were monogrammed with his initials, JRZ. Lily Safra’s extravagance earned her the nickname the Gilded Lily, a phrase that has been picked up by the European press.
On July 5, a little more than a week before I was to leave for Monte Carlo, I was at my house in Connecticut writing an article about the Skakel-Moxley case when the telephone rang. “Mr. Dunne?” Yes. “This is Lily Safra.”
You can imagine my surprise. I had never dreamed that she would talk to me. She said she was calling from London and was on her way to Paris. She said we had a mutual friend in Nancy—no last name, but I knew she meant Nancy Reagan. She speaks with an accent, probably Brazilian, since she spent much of her life in Brazil, up through her first two marriages. Her voice was deep and friendly, with a slight sound of widowhood in it. Then she got to the point of the call. She said she had heard I was writing about her husband. I said that was true. I told her I was sorry for the tragedy that had befallen her. She thanked me. Then she said some very nice things about my books and articles. I knew I was being charmed, but, quite honestly, she charmed charmingly. She said, “I have never given an interview, in all the years, but I would talk with you.” I was absolutely dumbfounded. She asked where I would be staying. The Hôtel Hermitage, I said. I had picked it because it is adjacent to the building where Edmond Safra died. Debris from the conflagration fell on the terrace of the Hermitage. She asked for the date of my arrival and gave me her telephone number at La Leopolda. She said I should call her and we would meet. I was thrilled. I wanted to hear about the fire from her point of view—what it was like for her that morning, how she heard, whom she called, how she escaped.
Then she must have called her lawyer, Marc Bonnant, and told him she had spoken with me. I can only imagine that he must have flipped out, because he was not in a good mood when he phoned me from his office in Geneva the next day. By coincidence, I had met him a few weeks earlier at the Carlyle Hotel in New York in connection with another case, involving the very complicated circumstances surrounding the suicide of the daughter of the Baron and Baroness Lambert of Geneva. This time he announced himself as the lawyer for Lily Safra, and his heavily accented voice conveyed deep annoyance. He happens to be one of Europe’s finest lawyers. He represented Edmond Safra in several libel suits connected to the smear campaign initiated by American Express against the billionaire. “What is this about an interview? It’s impossible. She can’t do an interview. What did you want to talk to her about?” I said I wanted to talk about the fire. “But that’s exactly what she can’t talk about, with the upcoming trial,” he said, his voice growing sharper. I reminded him that I had not called Mrs. Safra and requested an interview, that she had called me and offered one. Then he told me that I should send him a list of my questions, that he would decide which of them I could ask, and that he would be present at the interview.
I let six days pass and then sent him a fax stating that his terms were unacceptable. I said that Edmond Safra’s death was a major story, and that he was not going to be able to control the press. I said that Mrs. Safra had talked openly to many of her friends about the fire, and that her remarks had been repeated with great regularity at dinner parties. I gave him some examples of things she had said to mutual friends about the death of her husband, without revealing who had told them to me. I said I was aware of the hatred that existed between Mrs. Safra and Edmond’s two brothers. I suggested that Mrs. Safra and I meet at La Leopolda for tea, just to meet, and said that I would not ask her about the fire. I ended my letter, “Quite honestly, I wish I weren’t staying in Monaco. People tell me that my phone will be tapped and that I will be followed, all of which is quite nervous making, but good copy once I get home.”
onnant did not reply to my fax, but the next day I received a second call from Lily Safra. She said she was very sorry about the call from her lawyer and said that, yes, of course we could meet, but she would prefer doing it in Paris rather than at La Leopolda. She set a time for two days earlier than we had originally planned to meet. I was to call her on my arrival in Paris.
The night before I left for Monte Carlo, I had a telephone call from David Patrick Columbia, a New York society columnist with great connections in the social world. He had just had a call from a prominent resident of the principality who had heard I was coming to cover the Safra story. “Tell Dominick there were two bullets in Edmond’s body,” the Monegasque citizen had said.
After arriving in Monte Carlo, I checked in at the Hermitage. The first thing I did was walk out on the terrace and look up at where the fire had been. Reconstruction work was in progress. Workmen on ladders were installing a bright new mansard roof. After making myself known in the hotel, I asked one of the concierges if he had been on duty at the time of the fire. He had. He told me fire hoses had been dragged through the lobby of the hotel and out to the terrace to combat the flames. It took three hours to put the fire out. He said the lobby had been filled with Monaco police dressed in riot gear with masks, holding machine guns, because they believed that a terrorist attack was under way. He said there was utter confusion, with people running to and fro but accomplishing very little. Later, when I asked him his name for this article, he blanched. “No, no, Mr. Dunne,” he said, “please don’t use my name.” He drew a finger across his throat.
The fear of incurring the displeasure of Prince Rainier is rampant among the citizenry. A young woman who is a resident of Monaco and whose mother is a friend of mine had agreed to work as my translator while I was there. On my arrival, she told me she had decided not to take the job. She said she thought it might not be wise for her to be seen with me, since the renewal of her residence papers was coming up. Although I had been warned that I would be followed, I don’t believe I was, but I did have one slightly unsettling experience. I was out walking one Sunday morning when two men in gray suits approached me. I had an odd feeling and immediately said I was looking for the Catholic church to attend Mass. One of them courteously pointed it out to me. I went to Mass and stayed to the end. Later, I saw the same two men in the lobby of my hotel.
The rumor of the two bullets in Safra’s body was a constant in conversations among the fashionable element of the town, although it was spoken of in hushed tones and with caution. The fact that no such thing appeared in the autopsy report did not diminish the rumor’s popularity, for a very highly placed person was named as the source. People with whom I dined in public stopped talking whenever a waiter put a dish down or took one away, saying that you never knew who might report you. Furthermore, by then the word was out that members of the Safras’ nursing staff, as well as butlers, secretaries, and assistants, had been asked to sign confidentiality oaths. Certain of them received as much as $100,000 for not speaking to journalists or outsiders.
W. Somerset Maugham, the late British novelist who spent most of his life on the Riviera, once described Monte Carlo as “a sunny place for shady people.” There are no bums, no panhandlers, and no homeless people sleeping on the street. “I feel perfectly safe wearing my jewels out at night here,” a lady said to me at Le Grill, a restaurant on the roof of the Hôtel de Paris. But the fatal attack on Safra threw into question, in the words of Le Journal du Dimanche, “the legendary inviolability of the ultraprotected State.” It seems absurd that Edmond Safra was not rescued, with all that manpower running around the premises for two hours. One of the most intriguing examples of the botched police work was that, when Lily Safra’s chief of security, Samuel Cohen, finally arrived at the scene, she gave him a key that would have unlocked the door to the bunker bathroom, where Safra and Vivian Torrente were inhaling the fumes that were going to kill them. But the Monaco police seized the security chief and put handcuffs on him. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that someone in that battalion of rescuers could have informed the police that the man they were holding in handcuffs possessed the key to the locked bathroom, and that two people were dying as a result.
Safra’s death has come at a particularly bad time for the principality. France has recently accused Monaco of being a major center for money-laundering. Prince Rainier, 77, who enjoys the status of supreme authority as monarch, has been in ill health and has recently undergone three operations. His heir, Prince Albert, 42, has shown no sign of marrying and carrying on the 700-year-old Grimaldi line. Princess Stephanie’s unfortunate romantic alliances and inappropriate marriage have dominated the trash media and become a family embarrassment, and the beloved Princess Caroline’s third husband, Prince Ernst of Hanover, is proving unpopular with the populace for his unseemly behavior while intoxicated, for example beating up a cameraman and urinating on the Turkish pavilion at the Hanover World’s Fair, a prank that nearly caused an international incident. To get the Safra mystery solved and out of the papers as quickly as possible is obviously highly desirable.
There was no way that I could see Ted Maher in the Monte Carlo prison, and his lawyers, George Blot, who is a citizen of Monaco, and Donald Manasse, an American who lives there, would not be interviewed. From what I gather through friends in Monaco and Ted Maher’s family, the lawyers’ line is the party line. It occurs to me that Ted Maher needs an Alan Dershowitz to come to his rescue.
One night I went to a birthday party at the Villefranche-sur-Mer villa of Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Wyatt of Houston, Texas, who have summered on the Riviera for years. The villa, which is pretty special, looks right down on La Leopolda, which is utterly magnificent. Grace Kelly and Cary Grant shot To Catch a Thief in the Safra house, when it belonged to other people. I was hoping that Lily Safra would be at Lynn Wyatt’s birthday party, but she did not attend. Prince Albert appeared briefly before dinner, dressed in black-tie for a concert that was being held in the palace that night. We were not introduced. Subsequently I heard an unconfirmed report that Prince Albert had been helicoptered out of Monte Carlo on the night of the fire because his father believed that a terrorist attack was under way.
Lynn Wyatt said she had seen Lily Safra at La Leopolda the week before, at a small lunch party for the art dealer William Acquavella and his wife. She said that Lily was in a black T-shirt and black pants, and wearing no jewelry, and that she was staying in the guesthouse because the big house was so lonely without Edmond.
“I’m going to see her in Paris on Thursday,” I told her.
When I flew to Paris and checked in at the Ritz Hotel, however, I was handed a fax from Lily Safra canceling the interview. Although the fax bore her signature, there was a social faux pas in the letterhead that made me realize it was a legal letter faked as a personal one. Someone as socially adroit as she would never have a letterhead that read “Mrs. Lily Safra.” It would be either just plain Lily Safra or Mrs. Edmond Safra. “Mrs. Lily Safra” is the letterhead of a divorced woman, and Lily Safra has ascended in the ranks of the wealthy as possibly the richest widow in the world.
“Dear Mr. Dunne,” the fax read. “On reflection, it is my view that the privacy of my family and that of my husband’s family is so precious that it would be inappropriate for me to meet with you at this time. This is particularly so because my husband only died recently.” What didn’t ring true to me was the line about the precious privacy of her husband’s family, since I had been hearing from all sides for nearly a year stories of their mutual hatred. There were even rumors that the Safra brothers were going to contest Edmond’s will, which had been changed in Lily’s favor in the months prior to his death.
In Paris, Lily Safra’s great friend Hubert de Givenchy declined by fax to meet with me. But the crowd in that city that goes out to dinner every night had a lot of versions of what had happened on the fateful morning of December 3, 1999, when two people died who could very easily have lived. Everyone thought the story was more complicated than the official version—which was that the male nurse did it. “Sure, sure, he’ll do four years, and there’ll be $4 million waiting for him,” one man said to me. His wife didn’t agree with him. “You wait. He’ll conveniently die in prison in a few years of pneumonia or something.” A more conservative friend of the Safras said to me in Paris, “Among friends, we avoid talking about it. It might not be what it is.”
The well-known New York public-relations figure Howard Rubenstein called the editor of this magazine to say that he was Lily Safra’s new press representative and that he wanted to set up a meeting for himself and her lawyer, the notoriously tough Stanley Arkin, who had been one of Edmond Safra’s lawyers in his case against American Express. The editor said that he would not meet with the lawyer, and the get-together did not take place. But the point had been made that Lily Safra was distressed that an article was being written about her husband’s death.
I was then asked to have lunch with Jeffrey Keil at the headquarters of his business, International Real Returns (I.R.R.), on Wooster Street in the SoHo section of New York.
Keil, who is 57, left Edmond Safra to start his own financial-advisory firm. He remained very close friends with Lily Safra, and was the first person to arrive in Monte Carlo from the United States after Edmond’s death. According to informed sources, he helped Lily make up the guest list for the funeral in Geneva, arrange the seating in the synagogue, and decide which guests would be asked to the reception at the house after the service. He later performed the same function for the memorial service in New York.
The floor-through headquarters of I.R.R. are wonderfully stylish, in a spare, black-and-white way. Keil’s secretary took me into a conference room, where two places had been set at the table. Then Keil came in from another room, where a meeting was going on. He was carrying two presents wrapped in shiny white paper. He said that he had read several of my books and articles in the past weeks and felt he knew enough about me from the way I wrote to know the kind of books I would like. He gave me two beautifully preserved first editions from decades earlier, the memoirs of the Duchess of Windsor, entitled The Heart Has Its Reasons, and one called H.R.H., a character study of the Prince of Wales, published in a limited edition in 1926. He also knew that I preferred Perrier to wine.
I’d done my homework, too. I knew that he lived in a beautiful house in Brooklyn Heights. I knew that he’d once gone out with Bianca Jagger and also with Joan Juliet Buck, now the editor of French Vogue. His cook had come from his home to prepare our vegetarian meal. The lunch was interesting in a chess-match sort of way. When the social conversation lapsed, we still didn’t get to the point of the lunch, which I suppose was to find out what I knew. There was a long power silence, which I hear is supposed to make you nervous, but we both sat it out quite calmly. What he wanted to talk about was how Lily Safra was going to be portrayed in this article. I took out my leather notebook and pen and made no secret of writing down what he said. “It is important in this part of her life that she be well thought of. It would be devastating for her to be treated unfairly in New York, as she was in the French press. She should be thought of more as, say, Mrs. Astor than Mrs. Grenville—I mean the younger Mrs. Grenville.” I looked at him. I could hardly believe what he had said. Years ago I wrote a popular novel called The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, based on a tragic death in the Woodward family. In my novel, the younger Mrs. Grenville shoots and kills her husband. He must not have finished the book, I thought, remembering that he had just said he had read my books in the past few weeks.
.
I asked him why there were no guards on duty that night. “The thought was to reduce the show,” he said. “It is Monte Carlo, after all, with all its security, so all the armed guards weren’t needed.”
I was touched by his very sincere love and respect for Edmond Safra. He told me Edmond loved Lily’s grandchildren as if they were his own. He also said that Safra was sensitive about the effects of his disease. He worried that his saliva would drip, and he patted his mouth with a handkerchief constantly. Further, he would leave a room when he anticipated that he was going to shake so that people would not see him.
When I had to leave for another appointment, Keil went down in the elevator with me. I felt as if something had been left unsaid.
“You should really see her,” he said.
“Did you know we were supposed to meet twice, and each time it was canceled?”
He knew. I showed him the fax I had received at the Ritz in Paris. “She never wrote this,” he said instantly.
“But she signed it,” I said.
He told me Mrs. Safra was in New York for the Jewish holidays, which I knew. I said I would be delighted to see her. It never happened.
I keep in constant touch with Ted Maher’s family in Stormville. Heidi Maher and Tammy, her sister-in-law, e-mail me all the updates on Ted’s case. Things are not harmonious between Maher’s family and the lawyers representing him. When Heidi requested a translation in English of the French fire report, she was told by the lawyers that it would cost $1,000, which she does not have. Dateline is preparing a segment on the case. “Ted wasn’t supposed to be on duty that night,” Heidi Maher tells me again and again. “They put him and Vivian on at the last minute.”
In her widowhood, Lily Safra has remained mostly out of sight, although she is frequently discussed. A friend of mine and her husband dined at La Leopolda late last summer. My friend told me that their chauffeur-driven car had to be cleared by the guards at the outside gates, and as soon as they entered the grounds they were surrounded by four more guards, carrying machine guns, who escorted the car to the house. My friend described the experience as “unnerving.” In all probability, La Leopolda will be put up for sale. It’s too vast for one person, too lonely. A fascinating rumor made the rounds that Bill Gates had bought it for $90 million. Although there was no follow-up to that story, real estate has definitely been on Lily Safra’s mind of late.
She bought a second apartment in her Fifth Avenue building for her daughter, Adriana. A well-known real-estate broker told me that Lily was annoyed that the financial terms of the transaction had been printed in the New York papers. She has also bought a mansion on Eaton Square in London, where they say she will be spending more time. In late August she donated a spectacular fountain and garden for Somerset House, which is being restored in the manner that Jacob Rothschild restored Spencer House. Lily Safra and Lord Rothschild gave a very grand dinner with an international guest list to dedicate the fountain and garden in Edmond Safra’s name. The fountain has 55 jets of water shooting into the air. Five was Edmond’s lucky number. He believed it warded off evil spirits.
Early in October, I was dining at La Grenouille, one of the swellest restaurants in New York, with three friends. The ladies sat side by side on the banquette. The other man and I sat on chairs opposite them, our backs to the room, so I didn’t have an opportunity to case the joint, which I usually do. When the six people at the table directly behind us got up to leave, I noticed them for the first time. I recognized the banker Ezra Zilkha and his wife, Cecile, prominent citizens in the business, social, and cultural worlds of New York, whom I know. Among their guests was the heiress Amalita Fortabat, who is always described in the society columns as the richest woman in Argentina. The Zilkhas’ closest friends for years had been Edmond and Lily Safra. Then I found myself looking directly into the face of the elusive Lily Safra, who had been seated directly behind me for two hours, at the same time that I was talking about her at my table. We recognized each other. I could see it on her face. I could feel it on mine. She bowed her head slightly in a very elegant manner, more of a European gesture than an American one. I rose to my feet and put out my hand. “Good evening, Mrs. Safra,” I said.
She gave me her hand, replying, “Good evening, Mr. Dunne.”
She was all in black. With her left hand she tossed her shawl over her right shoulder and walked on to join the Zilkhas at the door. They looked so privileged. But I had heard from Heidi Maher earlier that day that there was going to be a re-enactment of the night of the deaths of Edmond Safra and Vivian Torrente for the Monegasque judge handling the case and that Lily had been ordered to be present. Donald Manasse, Ted Maher’s lawyer, told me over the phone, “We hope and expect that the charges will be reduced at the end of the investigation.”
The re-enactment took place on October 20, in great secrecy, at 10:30 at night. It was held in the penthouse, over which a new roof had been built, but which otherwise is as it was on the night of the fire. Everyone involved during the hours of the conflagration was there. It was the first time since Edmond Safra’s death that Lily Safra, who had been in her bedroom at the other end of the house when she was awakened by the report of the fire, was in the presence of Ted Maher. She was accompanied by three lawyers, and Ted Maher was under guard, wearing handcuffs and a bullet-proof vest. A source who was present told me they were “terrified of seeing each other.” Ted went through a re-creation of lighting a toilet-paper fire in a wastebasket with a Howard Slatkin scented candle. The re-enactment lasted until five o’clock in the morning.
Maher has now been in prison for 11 months. He gets to talk to his wife once a week for 20 minutes, and their conversations are monitored and taped. Once, according to Heidi, when Ted brought up the name Lily Safra, the connection between Monaco and Stormville was cut off.