Gilded Lily (15 page)

One of many exhibits that the Monteverdes entered as evidence to link Lily and Edmond was a letter on Trade Development Bank letterhead in which the widow of Alfredo Monteverde “renounces all rights, title and interest in or arising from the above policy of assurance issued by your company [Abbey Life Assurance Co. Ltd.] on 9
^th
July 1968.” The date on the letter renouncing Lily's rights on Alfredo's £750 policy (“It was too little money to bother with,” said a lawyer who was familiar with the Monteverde estate) is December 5, 1969, which proved that Edmond's bank was indeed looking after Lily's interests shortly after Alfredo's death on August 25, 1969.

And well he should, for the court challenges against Lily would prove the first major threat to his own Swiss bank as the TDB was directly implicated in the lawsuit. While Edmond, no doubt, assured Lily that he would fix everything, it would take hundreds of thousands in legal fees and years of worry and frustration to repair the fallout from what turned into a legal quagmire on two continents. In the end, Edmond would make the resolution of Lily's legal issues a matter of the most urgent concern, and, in addition to the very capable Bastian Pinto, he would dispatch Walter Weiner, his most trusted attorney, to ensure that everything was taken care of.

The most serious claim in the suit was the accusation that Lily and Edmond, through his TDB, were hiding Alfredo's assets from the surviving family, and, most important, from his son, Carlos, the other heir to the Monteverde fortune. Among the inventory that they
alleged had not been noted on a list of Alfredo's assets prepared by Lily's lawyers, were properties, including the house on Rua Icatu, shares in various Brazilian companies, and jewels—diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and platinum. Also missing from the inventory were important paintings, including two works by Paul Klee (
Helldunkel Studie
and
Côtes de Provence
),
Le Clown
by Fernand Léger,
La Promenade des Jeunes Ecolières
by Pierre Bonnard,
Papier Colle
by Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso's
Le Peintre Colle
, and Vincent van Gogh's
Après l'Orage.
Like the jewels, the paintings had all been insured in London. Lily did declare the Van Gogh and some other paintings of lesser value by Brazilian artists in the inventory of the estate.

“The widow will neither account to us nor even disclose to us the assets which are in question,…and the mother and the daughter are seeking relief from this position which I describe as unconscionable,” argued Charles Sparrow, the lawyer for the Monteverde family in Britain's High Court of Justice.

For her part, Lily argued that she did not need to disclose the gifts that she had received during her marriage to Alfredo, which included the Icatu house that was transferred into her name in August 1968.

Regina and Rosy demanded nothing less than two-thirds of Alfredo's assets, arguing that they had operated Ponto Frio with Alfredo as a family company, and that the capital for the start-up in 1946 came from the gold and other assets that they took to Brazil from Romania, via England.

In court proceedings that would drag on for more than three years, the Monteverde family claimed that Alfredo's 1966 will was not valid since he was not of sound mind when it was drafted. In October 1966, when the will was signed, Alfredo was going through a particularly bad bout of the “spring disease.” He was undergoing intense psychiatric treatment and was on medication that clouded his judgment, the family argued. Alfredo's prescriptions for that period were entered as evidence in court. From 1955, when he was first diagnosed with manic depression, or bipolar disorder as it's known today, Alfredo was, at
various times, put on a combination of antidepressants such as Nardil (phenelzine sulfate), lithium carbonate, and Tryptizol (amitriptyline hydrochloride). All of these medications, taken in conjunction with each other or alone, could have slowed his intellectual functions and caused confusion, among other side effects.

In an affidavit, Dr. Giacomo Landau, one of Alfredo's physicians who had treated him since 1955, noted that at the time he drafted his 1966 will, “Alfredo João Monteverde was under my treatment at various occasions. It is no doubt about it [
sic
] that this patient suffered from a serious maniac [
sic
] depressive illness and he was so ill that he was not responsible for any decision that he might have made. He was all the time on heavy drugs which could cloud his memory.” Another Rio de Janeiro psychiatrist, Dr. C. Magalhães de Freitas, also noted under oath that Alfredo had been particularly ill in the fall of 1966, and that he had been interned twice that year at the exclusive São Vicente Clinic in Rio de Janeiro to treat his depression.

It was mainly for these reasons that Rosy and her mother questioned the validity of the 1966 will. “On my brother's death, his widow the defendant Lily Monteverde obtained a grant of probate to an alleged will of my brother (the validity of which is not admitted by my mother or myself) and obtained possession and control of all the family assets formerly in the possession or control of my brother,” said Rosy in papers filed with the court in London.

The Monteverdes also said that it was completely out of character for Alfredo to have excluded his mother, sister, and beloved niece, Christina, from the will. Both Rosy and her mother had worked as important consultants and had invested their own portions of the family fortune in Globex, the parent company of Ponto Frio. To prove this, hand-scrawled letters by Alfredo written to his mother and sister regarding the family business were introduced as evidence, as were the powers of attorney that he had drafted for his mother and sister to act on his behalf in all personal and business matters in the event of his illness or death.

The court proceedings were particularly ugly, with both sides accusing each other of greed. At one point, Charles Sparrow, the lawyer representing Regina and Rosy, caused some consternation when he declared in open court that his clients did not accept that Alfredo had committed suicide.

Inextricably tied to the English proceedings was a suit brought by Regina against Lily in Brazilian court, demanding the guardianship of Carlos Monteverde, her grandson, who was nine years old when Alfredo died. (Carlos had been adopted from an orphanage in Rio in 1959 while Alfredo was still married to his second wife, Scarlett.)

Under the 1966 will, Alfredo had named Lily as the guardian of his adopted son. Under Brazilian law, this is the standard legal course of action provided that the child is the natural-born off-spring of the deceased. But as nearly everyone in Rio knew, a case of mumps as an adult had rendered Alfredo sterile. So it was with much surprise that lawyers found a registry document dated October 17, 1964, allegedly signed by Alfredo and declaring that he was the natural father of the child and that his mother was Silvia Maria Monteverde, a woman no one had ever heard of. The Monteverde family was skeptical about this document and thought it was made by Alfredo when he was in the fog of a depression. Court records indicate that the 1964 registration was used by Lily to prove that her rights to Carlos and his share of the Monteverde fortune were ironclad.

Lily left Brazil with the children almost immediately after Alfredo's death. After all, Carlos didn't need to hear the gossip that was building in Rio social circles. Why did Alfredo Monteverde commit suicide? asked the ladies as they picked through their salads at the Gavea Golf and Country Club and the Rio de Janeiro Yacht Club. Why did Lily leave so suddenly? others wondered. She didn't even pack any of her clothes! She didn't say goodbye!

“On September 15, 1969, she [Lily] escaped with [Alfredo's] son to
London without saying goodbye to me,” said Regina in an affidavit. “I never saw the child again, and never received news of him, not even at Christmas or New Year's.”

Previously, Carlos had been in fourth grade at the Instituto Souza Leão, an upscale day school near the Icatu house in Rio. The decision to cut Carlos off from his family and friends in Brazil so quickly after the death of his father was also questioned by many of Lily and Alfredo's friends in Rio. Lily's rather cavalier treatment of the boy also became fodder for Regina's lawsuit seeking guardianship.

“The defendant in order to better attend to her interests removed her ward from Brazil, by taking him to a foreign land, where he is being educated in a form different from the Brazilian way, far away from the social contact with his relatives and with his environment,” argued Regina in Brazilian court filings.

Lily vigorously denied the accusation, brushing aside the fact that she did enroll the grieving Carlos in boarding school shortly after Alfredo's death, and she did begin living in a flat near Kensington Palace, rented for her by a corporation controlled by Edmond. She defended her decision to go to England by arguing that it was “to safeguard the interests of the minor child Carlos Monteverde, above all in order to prevent him becoming directly involved in this sordid type of defamation, while taking advantage of the deceased's wish to have his son brought up in England, as he himself had been.”

Furthermore, Lily noted that Regina had taken little interest in her own grandson when he was in Brazil. “Regina, as her name indicates, has always shown herself to be a willful and dominating person, imposing her wishes and desires, often in an arbitrary manner.”

In court papers filed in both Brazil and England, Lily's lawyers did their utmost to present her as the devoted mother, worried for the well-being of her son. “She has given her son all her love and devotion,” said Lily's attorney. “If she was already lavishing special affection on [Carlos], she has given him far more since the death of
his father, when she redoubled her tenderness in an endeavor to make good that sad loss.”

To complicate matters even further, Alfredo's second wife, Scarlett Delebois Monteverde, also demanded the guardianship of Carlos. In court papers filed in Rio de Janeiro, she claimed that she had adopted Carlos jointly with Alfredo after the boy had been abandoned as an infant at the reception room of the judicial authority for orphans in Rio de Janeiro in early 1960.

In her initial arguments to win guardianship, Scarlett made the argument that there was “a collision of interests between the present guardian [Lily] appointed by testament and the minor, and further emphasized that there exists a concealment of property” on Lily's part which was jeopardizing Carlos's interests under the will.

Like Regina and Rosy before her, Scarlett accused Lily of hiding Alfredo's assets and only declaring a small fraction of what they believed to be an immense fortune. For instance, at one point Lily declared that at the time of his death Alfredo owned only 1,479,200 shares of a total of 23 million in Globex. The figure made up just over 5 percent of shares in a company that he had founded and controlled his entire adult life. Moreover, Lily stated in initial court proceedings that Carlos owned only 7,663,165 shares or roughly 25 percent of the company—half of what should have been his entitlement under the 1966 will.

“Where are the remaining 15,396,835 shares of Globex capital?” asked the attorney for the Monteverde family. “If the defendant had any real interest in defending the rights of her ward, it is obvious that the defendant would make, or would be making, every effort to find the whereabouts of such shares ‘mysteriously' disappeared. However, it appears that the defendant is simply not interested in finding these shares.”

Scarlett's initial challenge to the probate court (known formally as the Court of Orphans and Successions) in Brazil was thrown out by
the judge, who upheld Lily's rights over Carlos. Undeterred, Scarlett appealed. When Lily learned that Scarlett had arrived on the scene, she immediately accused the Monteverde family of co-opting her for their own cause. Initially, at least, this was not true. Stelio Bastos Belchior, the Brazilian attorney for Regina, denied that there was any collusion with Scarlett on his client's part, and actually petitioned the court on behalf of Regina to halt Scarlett's initial proceedings.

But Regina must have regretted such a hasty decision, for prior to the appeal, the two women did join forces. Regina and Scarlett signed a joint statement that they would both look after Carlos and consult one another on the management of his assets should Scarlett win the guardianship of the boy.

The team effort enraged Lily. “One sees that the plaintiff, after the death of her son, did not accept his will, scheming and elaborating a plan and a strategy, directly or indirectly to circumvent the will of the deceased, either by trying to obtain the guardianship of the minor by means of the application of Marie Paule Delebois Monteverde, or upon that attempt failing, to sue (as she has done in England) for his share in the fortune of the deceased,” said Lily in her testimony.

Lily was relentless in her attacks on her former mother-in-law, whom she characterized as “an elderly lady with an imposing capacity for dissimulation and no moral qualities befitting her age.” When she found out about her son's death, Regina grieved with her daughter-in-law and promised to help her, Lily told the court. But “from the moment she learned of the contents of his will like a stroke of magic, all consideration, affection and trust which the plaintiff lavished on the defendant disappeared.”

At one point, Lily cautioned Regina “to hold her venom in check so as not to harm the son of Alfredo.”

But Rosy and her mother claimed they were only protecting the interests of Carlos and were not after the money for themselves.

As Regina's lawyer made clear, “if as a result of this action Mrs.
Regina Monteverde should obtain any benefit by way of property or assets, she now formally declares that she will take all the legal steps required for the purpose of assigning that benefit to the minor Carlos.”