Gilded Lily (2 page)

In October 2008, Lily's longtime friend Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, Rita Hayworth's daughter, honored her with an award for her work on behalf of the Alzheimer's Association. In her speech at the gala dinner at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, the princess pronounced Lily “an extraordinary woman—someone I admire and am honored to have been friends with for nearly three decades. She has inspired many and because of her actions the world is a better place and the future is ever brightening.” Lily herself donated a pair of ruby-and-diamond ear clips by JAR for the event's silent auction. The earrings were valued at $180,000—by far the most expensive lot at the auction.

But hand in hand with generosity went sheer extravagance. This was a woman who thought nothing of sending a favorite hairdresser on a transcontinental flight from Rio de Janeiro to Geneva to do her hair for an event. In 1989 she hired a commercial jet to ferry her friends from New York to Rio for her eldest son's wedding, and renovated a floor of the city's elegant Hotel Meridien for the comfort of her out-of-town guests. The decorating bill for her bedroom (not including furnishings) at her summer home in the south of France was over $2 million. A recent public records search in Manhattan revealed
that she has several vehicles registered in her name at one of her Fifth Avenue addresses, including a Bentley Brooklands Sedan and a rare BMW 750IL. One year, at Christmas, she sent out dozens of pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes to friends.

But her most important characteristic—the one that has propelled her astonishing ascent in social circles around the world—is a steely determination.

“I think that since childhood her dreams had always been to marry into the British nobility or, second best, to marry a billionaire (which she did), but on the world stage, with Class and Pedigree,” said Samuel Bendahan, her third husband. “I remember how truly annoyed she still was, months or years after the event, when she related to me that she was to have gone to some lavish function with J. Paul Getty, but that he had had to cancel and she never heard from him again.”

Of course, money was always important to her, said Bendahan, “but nothing like being very rich and being, say, the Duchess of Marlborough or
faute de mieux
Mrs. J. Paul Getty.”

Indeed, from an early age Lily knew what she wanted: wealth, power, and prestige. “Every girl dreams of her Prince Charming,” said Ana Bentes Bloch, who knew Lily in high school in Rio de Janeiro. “Lily was no different. She was such a beautiful girl that you really couldn't deny her anything.”

Others remember her differently. “She was a social alpinist,” said one acquaintance from the 1950s. “Her parents prepared her from a very early age to marry a rich man.”

Although she may not have always known exactly how to get the things that were most important to her, she knew instinctively how to take advantage of those around her who did. She has surrounded herself with an extremely loyal group of lawyers, financiers, and public relations advisers whom she rewards handsomely. But while they manage her financial and legal affairs on three continents, it is Madame who is clearly in charge.

On her own, Lily didn't achieve the wild success in business and
finance that distinguished two of her four husbands. But like them she is largely self-made—a middle-class arriviste from the far-flung reaches of South America who built her own impressive empire in elite society. She is a skilled and much admired hostess and an important philanthropist in her own right. She is also a canny survivor, a street-smart society princess who knew how to use her relationships with men to get ahead.

“She didn't exactly lie around the house all day eating chocolates,” recalled one of her acquaintances from the 1960s. “In many ways, I am completely repelled by her, but I also admire her greatly. She knows exactly how to take advantage of a situation.”

And she lets nothing and nobody stand in her way. Her vindictiveness can be swift and precise. She has been known to change the seating of guests at her elaborate dinner parties when one of them has made the slightest faux pas. A guest could easily be removed from the place of honor at her table and be relegated to the outer reaches of the “children's table” if he had done something to offend Lily.

She hates Safra's brothers in São Paulo, who have never accepted her—someone they view as a lapsed Ashkenazi Jew with a
past
. Although they were very close to Edmond, for years they resisted allowing Lily into their tight-knit Sephardic clan. But in the end she got her revenge. According to the Safra family, in the final months of Safra's life, Lily convinced Safra to distance himself from his siblings even though he had pledged to honor a long-standing Safra family tradition to turn over his banks for them to run. Edmond, who had no children of his own, had made the decision long ago that his younger brothers would take care of his banks when he was gone.

Few details have emerged about her personal life, largely because most of her former employees are forced to sign strict confidentiality agreements. Ted Maher's agreement, which is dated August 16, 1999, reads in part: “You agree that during any period of the retention of your services and thereafter you will not disclose or cause or permit
to be disclosed any confidential or non-public information…relating in any way to Mr. or Mrs. Edmond Safra, any member of their family, or any company owned or controlled by them or any member of their family…” The agreement goes on to say that “a breach of this confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement” will result in “immediate termination” and “the Safras shall have all additional rights and remedies available at law or in equity in the event of such breach.” Many former employees reacted with silence when approached for interviews for this book; others passed on their regrets through their attorneys. Others agreed to speak only under the strictest confidentiality.

Many were afraid of potential lawsuits, and described Lily and her elite group of aides as ruthless when it came to protecting her reputation—the carefully edited biography that stresses only her generous philanthropy and her relationship to one of the century's greatest bankers. In many ways, she has decorated her own life's story in the same way that she has decorated her sumptuous residences around the world.

“Lily Safra litigates with a bottomless pit,” said Lady Colin Campbell, a best-selling author and biographer of Diana, Princess of Wales. In 2005 Lily threatened to sue Lady Colin over her novel,
Empress Bianca
, which she felt was a thinly veiled roman a clef about her life.

“She's a narcissist who hungers for attention,” said Lady Colin, who turned the tables on Lily and sued her for lost revenues when Lily's lawyers managed to pressure her publisher to remove
Empress Bianca
from stores in England and destroy any copies remaining in their warehouse. The lawsuit ended in “a Mexican standoff,” said Lady Colin.

Still, Lily has attracted an extremely loyal following among her friends, although she has also managed to strike deep fear in the hearts of those who have fallen out of favor with her. Indeed, some of her friends not only refused repeated interview requests during
the research of this book, they claimed they had never met her. “I didn't know her at all,” said Carmen Sirotsky, a friend from Rio de Janeiro, who is listed as a witness at her wedding to Alfredo Monteverde in 1966—the second of the three times that they officially registered their marriage. On a trip to Rio de Janeiro in 1972, Lily introduced Carmen Sirotsky to Samuel Bendahan as “my best friend from Rio.”

For all the column inches devoted to descriptions of her exquisite clothes, fabled parties, and philanthropy, little is actually known about Lily Safra. Strangely, more is known about her husband, who made it his life's mission to stay out of the media spotlight. Safra almost never gave interviews, largely because his business was built on utter discretion and loyalty to his ultrarich clientele, most of them Sephardic Jews and Arabs who had entrusted their money to generations of Safra bankers in the Middle East.

“He was one of the smartest people I had ever met,” recalled Attia, who designed Safra residences around the world as well as the modern addition to the Republic National Bank of New York on Fifth Avenue. Attia met Safra at his offices in Geneva in 1978. During an epic meeting that lasted twelve hours and saw Edmond's dark-suited aides rushing into his office with breaking financial news on bits of white paper, Safra took dozens of calls from around the world as panic began to hit global markets, presaging one of history's worst recessions two years later.

“Milton Friedman called him on the phone to ask his advice,” recalled Attia, referring to the Nobel laureate and leader of the Chicago School of economists. “It was amazing. It seemed like he was at the center of the world.”

Safra unwittingly stepped back onto center stage as dawn broke over Monaco on December 3, 1999. As the fire raged inside the beaux-arts penthouse, the Safras found themselves thrust into an increasingly harsh media spotlight. Overnight, Lily went from being a glamorous hostess and a boldface name in the society columns
to front-page international news. But the instant fame came with a price. It invited intense scrutiny—the kind of publicity that she could surely do without.

Marc Bonnant, Lily's longtime lawyer, asked her point-blank on the witness stand at Ted Maher's trial in Monaco in 2002, “What do you think about people saying you were the cause of the tragedy?”

“It is awful,” replied Lily, impeccably dressed in a black business suit, her blonde hair cut stylishly short, her demeanor stoic. “I adored my husband. We were so united. Everyone around us knew that. We lived for each other.”

Following several days of testimony from fifty-eight witnesses, Maher was convicted of starting the fire that led to the two deaths and later sentenced to ten years in prison.

In a public statement after Maher's conviction in December 2002, Lily's public relations team rushed out a press release that attempted to put the terrible events behind her, “Let us thank God for this moment when justice has been done: the guilty man has been punished and the full facts of that dreadful night exactly three years ago, which claimed the lives of my dear husband and his devoted nurse, have been laid bare for all to see.”

But years after the end of the trial “the full facts” still remain elusive. Maher's defense team recently called for a full investigation after the French press reported that the trial may have been fixed and that legal authorities had met beforehand to work out Maher's conviction and sentencing.

In itself, Maher's trial raised more troubling questions than it answered: Why had the police and firefighters acted with such incompetence? Why had the servants and bodyguards been given the night off? Why did none of the servants have keys to the apartment? Why had Safra decided to sell his bank a month before his death? Who had made the decision to hire Maher? Why did Monaco authorities refuse to conduct a thorough investigation of the events leading up to Safra's death? Did Maher act alone?

As the São Paulo branch of Safra's family noted in their own competing and rather cryptic press statement following the verdict: “Those who were there at the scene on that fateful morning each know what they did and did not do. They must now live the rest of their lives with that knowledge.”

The events of December 3, 1999, proved so intriguing that the legendary
Vanity Fair
magazine columnist Dominick Dunne noted six years later, “Some crime stories simply refuse to die, even after a trial and a guilty verdict.”

But perhaps it was Ted Maher himself who would put it best: “This story is all about money, power, and corruption.”

Just after six a.m. on that fateful Friday morning, Safra's night nurse Vivian Torrente made what would be her final call to her boss Sonia Casiano Herkrath. By then the bathroom was filled with inky black smoke. Herkrath would recall that Torrente's voice sounded strangely sleepy, her words garbled. Herkrath later told authorities that she knew that the nurse was on the verge of losing consciousness. She could also hear Safra coughing incessantly in the background. “I knew she was near the end,” Herkrath told Monagesque authorities. “The line went dead.”

It would take firefighters another hour and a half to put out the blaze that had already killed Safra and his night nurse. When they finally managed to gain access to the fortress-like bathroom, they found Safra seated in an armchair and Torrente slumped on the floor behind him. Their nostrils were filled with soot which was as black as the trousers that Torrente was wearing. Their skin had turned greasy gray.

Workers from the coroner's office began to remove the bodies at 10:00 a.m. for transfer to the medical examiners' office in Nice for the autopsies.

In the drafty lobby of the Belle Epoque, a police officer sought out Lily to break the terrible news. Leaning on her daughter, Adriana, and son-in-law, Michel Elia, who had arrived moments earlier from
their apartment nearby, she made her way to the penthouse. The firefighters and police officers who had fumbled for hours in their efforts to save Edmond could now do little more than bow their heads:
Desolé
,
madame. Nos sinceres condoléances
.

A few weeks before her sixty-fifth birthday, Lily found herself a widow for the second time in her life. Like the first time, thirty years earlier, she also found herself in a uniquely privileged position. This time, the stakes were significantly higher and she would be described in the headlines that dogged her for years after Safra's death as one of the richest widows in the world. Days after the untimely death of Edmond Safra, Lily, an heir to her husband's immense banking fortune, received $3 billion from the sale of his bank. Coincidentally, a day before the fire, Monaco's Prince Rainier had signed the papers making the Safra couple citizens of Monaco. Acquiring citizenship in the principality is a long and complicated affair unless you are personally invited by the Prince, as was the case with Lily and Edmond, who had wined and dined the Grimaldis for years with this specific end in sight. Citizenship ensured that the couple's immense fortune would not be subject to any tax in the principality.