The mysterious death of Edmond Safra. Owner of a financial empire Death in Monaco

The US House of Representatives passed a bill to impose visa sanctions against Russians and simultaneously repeal the restrictive Jackson-Vanik trade amendment. One can assume that this was done to create an instrument of pressure, or one can see intra-ethnic “showdowns among moneylenders.” How should we react to what is happening?

The Senate will pass this bill before the Christmas break. President of the U.S.ABarack Obamacan sign the law before the end of the year, after which it will come into force. A day earlier, the House Rules Committee recommended that congressmen approve the document. The bill is believed to have bipartisan support.

(Wayne Madsen notes that the main sponsor of the Magnitsky Act in the Senate was a Democratic senatorBenjamin Cardinfrom Maryland, a leading Israeli lobbyist in Congress. A bill similar to the Magnitsky Act was proposed in Canada by a member of Parliament from the Liberal PartyIrwin Kotler, also an Israeli lobbyist. There is no need to say again that Cardin and Kotler are Jews. The Magnitsky Act was proposed in the British Parliament. The Conservative Party sponsor of this bill was a British Jew.Dominic Raab. The co-authors of the law were former foreign ministersMalcolm Rifkind, Jack Straw And David Miliband , all three are Jews)

Representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Alexander Lukashevich noted that Russia will “react harshly” if the law is adopted: “ In connection with the plans of the US Congress to adopt the so-called Magnitsky law, I consider it necessary to state that such a step will inevitably have a negative impact on the entire complex of Russian-American relations. We, of course, will not leave without consequences the essentially anti-Russian initiative - the introduction of visa and financial sanctions against our country, simultaneously with the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. We will have to react, react harshly, depending on what final form this unfriendly and provocative act takes».

Amendment Jackson-Vanika to the Trade Law was adopted in 1974 in connection with violations of the rights of Jews to emigrate in the USSR. Its main goal is to impose restrictions on trade with Russia.This legislation was pushed through by a hawkish Washington state senator. Henry "Stingy" Jackson, from whose senatorial office came such Jewish neocons, How Richard Pearl, Paul Wolfowitz And Douglas Faith. Since then, the Jews managed to leave (and return), and the amendment continued to “punish” Russia until 2012, when exhausted people within the country was not fooled enough to at least somehow resist the transfer of national sovereignty under the control of the WTO(however, in 2005 the director Abraham Foxman tried to use the provisions of the amendment against Ukraine for “anti-Semitic acts in the country”).

It is characteristic that the Jackson-Vanik restrictions are also filmed at the request of leading American Jewish lobbying groups, who voiced the demands of Jewish businessmen. For whom restrictions prevent them from conducting their extremely profitable business in Russia. That's why collective letter NCSJ (National Council of Soviet Jewry) signed the address to legislators; American Israel Public Affairs Committee; Anti-Defamation League; American Jewish Committee; Jewish Federations of North America; B'nai B'rith; Jewish Council on Public Affairs and Conference of Presidents of Leading American Jewish Organizations.

SERGEY LEONIDOVICH MAGNITSKY

- accountant and auditor, partner of the British law firm Firestone Duncan, went down in history not of his own free will. But it’s quite natural. He was the company's managing partner and head of its tax consulting division. The company's client is the British investment fund Hermitage Capital Management (HCM), which was founded in April 1996 William Browder (William Browder, grandson General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USA Earl Browder AndLarisa Berkman ) and former co-owner of the Republic National Bank of New York Edmond Safra(Edmond Jacob Safra, the main holder of capital of Brazilian Sephardic Jews).In the 1950s, the American Communist Party had more FBI informants than committed members. Browder's grandfather, like Judas, testified against the activities of the Communist Party of the USA at the anti-communist "witch hunt" hearings from the senator Joseph McCarthy, and in 1957 said Mike Wallace from the CBS News program that " My expulsion from the Communist Party is the best thing that happened to me».

Initially, Browder worked for the pro-Israel group Boston Consulting, which had previously worked tirelessly Benjamin Netanyahu And Mitt Romney- in the same period of time. Browder's next place of work is Fund HCM, was part of the Rothschild banking group HSBC.

The company Hermitage Capital Management itself was initially created in order to speculate in Russian GKOs - a financial form of “legalized” robbery of Russia. In the first months of 1996, the yield on GKOs rose to 100%. A month before the presidential election, it increased to a fantastic 250%. With an average maturity of GKOs of 134 days, bondholders could double their capital in less than four months.

The denouement came on August 18, 1998, when the Russian government decided to freeze payments on GKOs and reissue their new securities, all payments on which would be transferred to the 21st century. Then 11 million Russian citizens lost their funds. Those who kept their jobs had their salaries cut by an average of 2/3 (the national average to $55 per month). Behind official 40% of Russian citizens fell below the poverty line.

As a result of the collapse of the pyramid of Russian GKOs, Hermitage Capital had troubles in the United States... But already in the early 2000s, HCM was called the largest fund in Russia, which profited well from the rise of the market. But not only. Staying insignificant in the share of the authorized capital of such Russian companies as Gazprom, Sberbank, Surgutneftegaz, RAO UES of Russia, Transneft, etc., he also made money from blackmail - using his extensive international connections, blocking a number of IPO . Thereby playing short and receiving commissions from customers. Wherein " The money invested by Hermitige had grown 24 times by the end of last year and was growing twice as fast as the Russian exchange" The whole “genius of investing” was in the fraud with Gazprom shares. By creating a “semi-underground” stock market and playing on the difference between “internal” and “external” prices, when part of the stock was prohibited from being sold to foreign investors.

In June 2007, the Moscow City Internal Affairs Directorate for Tax Crimes opened a criminal case against the fund. The “grandson of the Secretary General” escapes to the USA. Which is not surprising. Investigators accused only one of his “financial schemes” of tax evasion in the amount of over 1.145 billion rubles.

Magnitsky, who has participated in the development of schemes for Hermitage, refused to cooperate with the investigation. And on November 24, 2008, he was arrested on charges of helping fund head William Browder to evade taxes. ( By information Wayne Madsen, Magnitsky used shell companies, holding companies and offshore companies to hide money. The firms were located from Vladivostok in the Russian Far East to Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Cyprus, Belize, the British Virgin Islands, the United Kingdom and Dubai. One of the shell companies, Prevezon Holdings, Ltd., was 99% owned by an Israeli "businessman" Denis Katsyv, and 1% belonged to the company Martash Investment Holdings Ltd. from the British Virgin Islands, also owned by Katsyv. The Katsyv family was under investigation in connection with a bank money laundering scandal involving the Israeli bank Hapoalim and a mafia figure - Lev Leviev. Katsyv owns multimillion-dollar New York real estate and runs a Hermitage-related business from Manhattan. The Magnitsky Act appears to have a “Jewish exception to the rule” clause.).

For a whole year, Magnitsky continued to refuse to cooperate with the investigation and made statements that “ law enforcement officers illegally seized Hermitage movable property" Lead him with this " through suffering and reproof“Browder’s lawyers, who convinced Magnitsky that he would be released in 11 months. When Magnitsky’s sentence was extended after 11 months, he “ rejects the assistance of these lawyers and agrees to cooperate with the investigation " After which on November 16, 2009 dies unexpectedly.

Of course, the seizure of someone else's property with the help of law enforcement agencies exists in Russia. As a defense against a criminal case against itself, a financial company publishes a scheme for the theft of money from the budget by officials themselves. But after it was published, who was more interested in the “Magnitsky silence”? After all, it was the head of Hermitage Capital Management who was accused of non-payment of billions in taxes.

Of course, a Russian prison doesn’t look much like a resort. But the death of the second of Browder's companions raises serious reflections. Here we need to remember the death of his first and main partner, Edmond Safra, whose existence the world learned about only after he suffocated from smoke on December 3, 1999 in the penthouse of the Monte Carlo branch of the Republic National Bank of New-York.

The fact is that the fund was not speculating on the GKO market in Russia with its own money.
« From the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (account #9091), $4.5 billion of the stabilization loan was transferred to account #608555800 at the Republic National Bank of New York of Edmond Safra, intended for stabilization operations of the Central Bank of Russia... Before the Russian default, 27 On July 1st, there were 400 million dollars in this account. During the default, the account grew to $21.5 billion, and on August 24, $300 million remained on it. It is unknown where this money, which included an IMF loan, went».

Therefore, the “unexpected” tragic death of Safra turned out to be very timely for both the co-ownerHCM W. Browder, and for other participants in the events. HCM began to actively develop precisely after death of the principal trustee who personally guaranteed return of funds from their principals.

The publicist described principles Edmond Safra in his article -


"THE SECRET OF GIZBAR"*

Immediately after the tragedy, the editorial pages of the world's newspapers were full of reports about the sensational death of a secret billionaire. But he was well known for his. At Safra's funeral in Geneva's Hekal Haness synagogue, 700 representatives of the world's business and political elite gathered - from the Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy to former UN Secretary General Perez de Cuellar. Nobel laureate there Elie Wiesel drew a line under the mysterious popularity of the “modest banker”: “ You brought together people who have different backgrounds, different cultures, different religions and social horizons».

How? Through a network of banks that were rumored to hold the savings of the richest “underground billionaires.”

To cover his murder, a rumor was started about the “Russian mafia” and the “Medellin cartel”: “ As early as 1989, the US Customs Service and the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency suspected that Republic National Bank of New York was involved in laundering drug dollars from Colombia's notorious Medellin Cartel. Then the matter died down. But nine years later, it was Safra's bank - a competitor of the Bank of New York - that informed the FBI about the latter's involvement in laundering funds coming from Russia. All these details suggested that both the Colombian drug mafia and Russian criminal circles were interested in Safra’s death (note: Safra’s banks had been cooperating with the USSR and then with Russia since the early 1980s, and their owner at the height of the 1998 default was somewhat once secretly met with the oligarchs of the Yeltsin era)».


The version of “mafia revenge” was born from the story of the “nurse” and bodyguard Safra - Theda Maher. According to it, two armed masked men allegedly entered the house, attacked Ted, who was in the gym, stabbed him three times, set the building on fire and disappeared in an unknown direction. However, within a week Ted Maher completely changed my readings: he cut himself with a knife, he also set fire to the napkins in the trash can himself, wanting to stage an assassination attempt on the owner, save him and gain fame as a hero and bonuses. Unfortunately, it got too much: the fire got out of control, and poor fellow Edmond Safra suffocated along with the nurse on duty Vivian Torrente. In 2002, Maher was sentenced to 10 years for manslaughter (he escaped from prison after 2 months, but surrendered, and was released in 2007, claiming in his interviews that he was forced to slander himself). But he stayed alive. And the ends were lowered into the water.

Meanwhile, Edmond Safra was protected by an army of Israeli bodyguards from the Mossad. Edmond Safra's paranoid obsession with his own safety can be judged by one episode: one day a random helicopter flew over his residence. The banker immediately called the French Minister of the Interior and obtained identification of the plane and complete information about the passengers on it.

It is clear that the answer to the question “Who killed Safra?” we'll never know. But you can outline the contours -


“WHO BENEFIT?”

Father of the dynasty Yakov Safra used usury to extract money from Arab merchants in the ancient bazaar in Aleppo. Father Yakov determined the creditworthiness of merchants with the help of his nimble five-year-old son Edmond. Under the guise of playing, he crawled into the back rooms of the shops and examined the goods. If it was not covered with a thick layer of dust, then the turnover was brisk and there was not much fear for the repayment of the loan. Exactly like this " banking activities“The moneylender Jacob Safra increased the family’s starting capital, and the future billionaire Edmond mastered life’s “universities.”

Several decades of persistent extortion and foreign exchange transactions allowed Edmond's father to build a semblance of the family bank J.E. in Beirut in 1920. Safra Bank. The establishment of “Israel” put an end to business, making it difficult for Jews to do business in Arab countries. In 1949, Jacob Safra left Lebanon. But not to Israel, where to work, and to Italy. 17-year-old Edmond was sent to train at one of the “ethnically similar” Milanese trading companies.

But things didn’t work out for them in post-war Italy, so in 1952 the “bankers” moved to Brazil, which gave shelter to a very large number of Sephardim who emigrated from Europe during the Second World War. It was the Sephardim, not the Ashkenazim, who mainly settled in the United States.

Sephardim are more conservative and secretive. Their capitals took hundreds of years to form. Ashkenazim are more impudent and more liberal. Their capitals began to be formed not so long ago. There is a conflict between them XVII V. from the time of "Amsterdam pogrom", when the “Ashkenazi proletarians” expelled from Ukraine they robbed, did not want to work as hired workers for their fellow believers. And they began to beat the local Sephardic Jews, who had long occupied niches in slave trade, banking and stone trade. It was the Sephardim who contributed capital to the Bank of Amsterdam, and later to the Bank of England, where they withdrew their capital from the “Ashkenazi proletarians.”

Actually, it was the Sephardim who at one time organized the capture of Brazil by the Dutch. The Brazilians knocked out the last ones after a couple of decades. But the Sephardim remained.

Jacob Safra, a Sephardi with a distinguished family history, literally went to the homes of all prominent Brazilian Sephardim, offering himself as a so-called. " gizbara» ( treasure keeper). With guaranteed safety of the original investment, conservative investment policy and absolute confidentiality. Safra's financial empire rested on these three pillars. 95% of the entrusted funds were invested in “high-grade securities” (US Treasuries, etc.), and only 5% was used for speculation. And then on the proven gold futures market, where Kahal ruled for a long time N. M. Rothschild & Sons .

Jacob Safra managed to convince his fellow tribesmen of the impeccability of his own candidacy for the role Gizbara Sephardim South America. Banco Safra S.A. was born. , which has ballooned before our eyes to become Brazil's fourth largest financial institution. In 1955, the family business was divided. Edmond Safra went to Switzerland to develop the gizbar concept in the Old World, and management of the Brazilian bank passed to his brothers - And Moishe Joseph

In 1956, a private Trade Development Bank was established in Geneva with a starting capital of one million dollars. Then expansion into the United States began: Edmond Safra founded the Republic National Bank of New York in Manhattan in 1966. In 1988, the American bank merged with the Swiss twin Republic National Bank of New York (Suisse), forming the holding company Safra Republic Holdings S.A., which became the focus of Edmond Safra's activity in attracting the colossal fortunes of Sephardim around the world.

The phenomenal reputation of a reliable and inconspicuous special storage facility for private fortunes brought the richest people on the planet to Edmond Safra (remember the words of Elie Wiesel at the wake). One of the bankers who visited Safra at his Monaco residence was amazed at the long line of petitioners who had accumulated outside his office: “ I felt like I was in a private doctor's office!“Representatives of the most secretive rich people in the world conveyed to Edmond Safra the owners’ request to accept their savings for safekeeping.

In 1983, Edmond Safra took an unexpected step and sold his thriving Trade Development Bank. To whom? Rockefeller's American Express. From the deal he gets $450 million and a seat on the board of directors of American Express.American Express managers apparently anticipated fabulous dividends from customer accounts opened at Safra's bank. But that wasn’t the real deal. This ethno-religious group exists thanks to inside information and long planning horizons.

A year later (May 11, 1984), after the sale of Safra's bank to American Express, his division acquired the investment company Lehman Brothers for $360 million. A year later, the denationalization of the country's two largest banks, Hapoalim and Leomi, began in Israel. The Israeli government appointed... Lehman Brothers, which came under the control of American Express, as the financial consultant for the transaction. On the board of directors of which Edmond Safra sat - thanks to the sale of Trade Development Bank two years earlier.

So the last stage of this operation has arrived. After meeting all the needs associated with the denationalization of Israeli banks, gizbar Edmond Safra called his Sephardi clients, warning them that he was leaving American Express and Trade Development Bank. And Sephardim along with leaving your gizbar transferred all their money from Trade Development Bank accounts to divisions of Republic National Bank of New York.

American Express, of course, removed Safra from the board of directors, and then tried to launch a campaign to discredit him: they say that his clients are entirely drug dealers and arms dealers, and Safra himself is the leader of an international gang of financial robbers. Thus, they only confirmed to his clients that they had left the bank correctly. Safra filed a lawsuit, failed to prove anything (who would doubt it?), and American Express, after a shameful public apology, also paid moral damages in the amount of $8 million to another Sephardic charitable foundation.

In the mid-90s it reaches Safra communist grandson W. Browder. And here the Sephardi’s greed fails. He violates the strict rules of the family business and gets into the Russian GKO market (later it became known that it was the Rothschild bank that gave “good advice” HSBC).

His partners allegedly heated up $191 million on Safra’s state bonds. Edmond was offended and alerted the FBI to laundering schemes Ashkenazi and "Rockefeller" at the Bank of New York, from which, after the death of the banker, arose a huge scandal with Russian money laundering to the IMF.

Be that as it may, at the beginning of 1999, Edmond Safra started a big deal to sell his entire empire, Safra Republic Holdings S.A., to the HSBC financial group. for $10.3 billion (HSBC is the largest bank in the world, owned Ashkenazim Rothschilds and Shabad Freemasons Keswickam ).

An important figure in this transaction was the wife of Edmond Safra - a lady with a rich past named Lily(Watkins in her maiden name). Lily Safra was born, according to one version, in the Brazilian Porte Allegro, according to another - in the London suburb of Streatham. My mission she started at age 17, when she first married a Sephardic tycoon from Argentina Mario Kogana. Lily's second husband was the richest businessman in Brazil Alfredo Monteverde, who four years later became depressed and committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart. As they say, twice. At the same time, Lily inherited a colossal fortune from her husband, which brought her to correct heights.

So in 1976 she married for the third time - to Edmond Safra. The main achievement of her marriage was the complete quarrel between her husband and Brazilian brothers and nephews from Banco Safra S.A., as well as the absence of children, and therefore no heirs. When in 1999 old gizbar decided to transfer his entire financial heritage into “good hands”, there is no doubt that the recommendations of the valiant Lily Kogan-Monteverde-Safra played the first violin.

At the end of the summer, Lily Safra’s daughter (from a previous marriage) found in New York a wonderful medical worker who, before retraining, had been “trained” for many years in the elite unit of the American “Green Berets” - Ted Maher - and introduced him to “beloved Uncle Edmond” at the subject of combining the positions of a nurse and a bodyguard. Uncle Edmond, whose hands had been shaking with frightening amplitude in recent months, liked Ted Maher so much that he gave the “foot soldier” a salary of 600 dollars per day.

Two weeks before the fire, Ted's probation ended and he was hired. We already know what happened on December 3, 1999. It only remains to add that the police arrived at Safra’s residence an hour and a half before he suffocated from the fire. All this time, the banker, along with a nurse, sat locked in an armored bathroom and called friends, calling for help. For some reason, firefighters and police were in no hurry to pull Edmond Safra out, but instead focused on searching for the mythical masked intruders. Needless to say, none of the hundreds of internal and external surveillance cameras recorded any unauthorized persons?

When the smoke cleared, many got what they wanted. “Russian and Colombian mafia” - moral satisfaction from the punishment of the “informer”; Lily Safra - $1.5 billion inheritance; and HSBC (and their modest partner and grandson of the Secretary of the US Communist Party W. Braude) - the financial empire of Safra with all the accounts of the Sephardim, who this time could not go anywhere for their gizbar.

However, this is a bravura version S. Golubitsky about the fact that " Ashkenazim took revenge on the Sephardim" According to another version of Izvestia, the decision made by Edmond Safra to sell the banking empire for $2.7 billion to the HSBC consortium was strongly opposed by his younger brother Joseph. It was Edmond's death a few days before the completion of this operation that prevented the deal from being completed in full. As a result, Joseph, having paid compensation to his brother’s widow in the amount of $700 million, retained control over most of the family empire. This version assumes that " The Sephardim remained with their own people and left to take revenge on the Ashkenazim».

A funny educational read. But nothing more. Because the -


WE DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS SERPENTARY

How, in fact, by and large we don’t care which of them is guilty of Magnitsky’s death - grandson of a Judeo-communist, global and native Jews or greedy Russian officials. This is an internal matter their serpentarium.

Moreover, we need to give a damn about the notorious “Magnitsky law,” which provides for the introduction of visa and financial sanctions against persons involved in “human rights violations,” although it may affect not only those who are on the so-called “list.” The rage around this dubious story, and turning it into a political “Magnitsky case”, is necessary in order to have a means of putting pressure on Russia in order to change its domestic and foreign policy - through officials controlled by Their System - with real estate and accounts in the USA and the West.

For the vast majority of Russian citizens, what is significant is that this noise covers up the real problem from the consequences of joining the WTO, which means the actual loss of state sovereignty and its transfer to the control of international multinationals.

And the question, by and large, should not be about laws Magnitsky-Vanik-Jackson etc., but about restoring the country's sovereignty. We should be talking about a national liberation struggle against the system that has built and is supported by the global the Old Testament matrix of profit for the “elect”.

But we must build own System Hermitage Capital Management

existing since the time Alexander the Great Souq Al Medina market was recently completely burned by militants

Lily Safra was also allegedly brought in by the sale of the Villa Leopold in Villefranche-sur-Mer, Alpes-Maritimes, Mikhail Prokhorov(read – paid from the national wealth of Russia)

04.06.2015

One of the largest bankers XX century, known for his amazing foresight, who during his lifetime was credited with money laundering, drug trafficking, connections with Boris Berezovsky and the Russian mafia, went down in history as an outstanding investor and generous philanthropist.

Mysterious death in Monaco

On December 3, 1999, the body of 67-year-old billionaire Edmond Safra and his nurse were discovered in a luxurious mansion in Monaco. The banker's death immediately became overgrown with mysterious details. Some blamed the Russian mafia, others - his wife. But not everyone still believes the conclusions of the investigation.

Edmond Safra was sure that an assassination attempt was being prepared on him, and was obsessed with his own safety. He turned his Belle Epoque (“Beautiful Century”) mansion in Monaco into a real bunker. The house was simply stuffed with various tracking and security systems, and each room was reinforced with armor and could only be opened with a code. Jokers said that his shelter could withstand even a small nuclear explosion. Safra hired veterans of the Israeli intelligence services as security guards, and even the servants and medical staff had experience serving in the Israel Defense Forces.

Safra's fears for her own life sometimes took absurd forms. One day a helicopter flew over a banker's villa on the Cote d'Azur. Safra immediately called the French Minister of the Interior and demanded to know the flight number and full information about all passengers. Moreover, he achieved a ban on flights over his mansion. And yet, all this did not save the influential banker. What happened in the seemingly impregnable fortress?

According to nurse Ted Maher, two unknown men armed with knives entered the house at night, he tried to stop them, as a result he was wounded, but managed to escape. On the way, he woke up nurse Vivian Torrente, who was caring for a billionaire suffering from Parkinson's disease, who instantly took Safra into the bathroom, where they locked themselves.

When the police arrived at the mansion, it was on fire. Having broken down the bathroom door, law enforcement officers discovered two bodies: Edmond Safra and his nurse had suffocated in the smoke.

Apart from Maher, no one saw the criminals; they were also not captured by any of the numerous cameras with which the entire house was hung. The police were dismayed by the situation. Moreover, there was another strange thing: the banker had a mobile phone with him in the bathroom, moreover, he called his wife Lily from it, who had taken refuge in the bedroom. She told her husband that help had arrived, but Safra did not answer the door for firefighters or police. He was sure that his wife had been taken hostage and was being forced to say that if only he would open the bathroom door.

As a result, Ted Maher turned from the main witness into the main accused. In 2002, the court found him guilty. The investigation claimed that Maher himself started the fire in order to heroically cope with it and win the respect of the owner, but everything got out of control and Maher had to quickly change plans. This is where the story emerged about unknown masked intruders who failed to cope with the security system and started a fire. During the investigation, Maher admitted that the attack by unknown persons was his invention, that he only set fire to the trash can, but the fire spread through the house too quickly.

Someone else's stupidity, an absurd coincidence of circumstances and pathological suspicion - all this cost the life of one of the greatest bankers of the 20th century.

Who are you, Mr. Safra?

Edmond Safra did not have to choose a path in life, everything was predetermined. He became a successful successor to a dynasty of bankers that had existed since the times of the Ottoman Empire. Its founder was Edmond's great-great-great-grandfather. A family of Lebanese Jews began their ascent to Olympus by financing camel caravans that transported goods. In 1920, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Jacob Safra, Edmond's father, moved to Beirut, where he opened his own bankJacob E. Safra. Edmond was born in Beirut in 1932.

Since childhood, Edmond helped his father in business, namely, he determined the creditworthiness of borrowers. When his father visited potential borrowers, mostly merchants, little Edmond, as if playing and fooling around, climbed into the room where the goods were stored. If there was no dust on it, it means that their trade was going briskly and you shouldn’t be afraid to lend to them.

By the age of 16, Edmond had already fully entered the family business,and for this he had to quit his studies. He quickly and successfully mastered everything related toprecious metals and international trade.But soon the family had to leave Lebanon: after the formation of the state of Israel in the neighborhood and the start of the Arab-Israeli wars, it became unsafe for Jews to live in Beirut.

In 1949, Edmond Safra moved to Italy, and three years later to Brazil. There, the young financier again actively got down to business: in 1955, he foundedBanco Safra, and already in the early 1960s the bank became one of the five most successful financial institutions in Brazil. However, Safra once again dramatically changed his life path: he sold the bank to his two brothers, who continued to manage it quite successfully, and he himself went to Switzerland. The irrepressible activity inherent in Edmond from a young age was accompanied by pathological suspiciousness - he saw enemies in almost everyone, and especially in his competitors. Often this suspiciousness forced Safra to do unpredictable things.

In Europe, his career took off sharply. He invested a million dollars into the founding of the Trade Development Bank, and by the early 1980s the bank's assets exceeded $5 billion, and the bank itself became the crown jewel in the family empire. Edmond knew how to get along with any clients: his bank served both Jews and rich Arabs. For his ability to deal with two opposing sides, he began to be called the “Arab Jew.” But Safra could not stop there; he decided to conquer another continent - North America. In 1966 he travels to the USA and opens Republic National Bank of New York , which also became a very successful bank over time.

In the 1980s, Safra was first embroiled in a high-profile scandal and trial. Everything went wrong after the deal with American Express - he sold Trade Development Bank to it, but remained in charge of it. He was unable to get along with the new shareholders and, as a result, left and founded a new bank, which was in direct competition with the one he sold. In response, American Express launched a real war against Safra. Rumors spread that he was laundering money from drug and arms trafficking. Edmond sued the offenders, but they chose to reach a peace agreement, apologized to Safra and paid $8 million to the charities he named.

Unequal marriage

Until the age of 44, Safra was single. His brothers persuaded him to marry in order to give birth to an heir. Finally he did it, but in a way that shocked many. Brazilian Lily Monteverde, before meeting Safra, managed to be married twice and give birth to two children. She met Edmond after the suicide of her second husband, who left her a good inheritance. She came to Safra to get advice from a famous banker on how best to manage her inheritance. As a result, business communication quickly grew into something more.

Lily was quite rich herself, which, in Safra's opinion, spoke of her selflessness towards him. However, his brothers were not convinced. In addition, in their opinion, it was not worth getting involved with an adult woman who is unlikely to be able to have children. Not to mention the fact that her husband's suicide seemed very suspicious to Edmond's relatives. And yet, despite family resistance, Edmond married Lily. The union was supported by a 600-page prenuptial agreement. True, between the affair and marriage the couple separated for a while, which was partly influenced by Edmond’s relatives. And during this time Lily managed to get married again, again to a very wealthy man, and divorced two months later. Edmond and Lily never had their own children. But Safra liked to say that children are his banks.

Why, after the banker’s death, did evil tongues blame Lily for his death? Firstly, because of her dubious past, secondly, because of the huge inheritance that she received after the death of Edmond, and thirdly, it was her daughter Lily who brought Ted Maher into the house, who played such a role in the fate of Edmond Safra fatal role.

Russian trace

In the mid-1990s, Safra's instincts failed her for the first time. He met a famous financier and investor,founder of the Hermitage Capital fundWilliam Browder. In Russia, Browder's name became widely known only in the 2000s in connection with the Magnitsky case. Let us recall that in 2008, lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who worked for Browder, was accused of tax evasion and thrown into Matrosskaya Tishina, where he died in 2009 from failure to provide medical care. Browder's international campaign to defend Magnitsky and bring to justice those responsible for his death led to the introduction of the first sanctions against Russian officials in 2010 by the United States and the European Union, known as the "Magnitsky List." But Browder himself has been working on the Russian stock market since the early 90s, and he attracted Safra to this activity as a partner. And Edmond, having violated the immutable rules of the family business and his own guidelines, which dictated that he invest money only in reliable securities, such as American bonds, suddenly, under the pressure of Browder, believed in Russian GKOs. The 1998 default devalued these investments, and Safra lost $191 million.

However, the life of the billionaire was darkened not only by this: information spread in the media that a few days before the default, Safra helped Russian officials steal an IMF loan allocated to the country in the amount of $4.8 billion. And that’s not all: there were rumors that Safra was forced to reveal to the FBI a scheme to launder these funds in Western banks. In the fall of 1999 to Villa Safra La Leopolda Boris Berezovsky came to the Cote d'Azur in order to prevent the leakage of information dangerous for participants in fraud with IMF money.

Safra's conversation with Berezovsky lasted several hours and was in a raised voice. Both participants were dissatisfied with its results. Upset, Berezovsky went to his villa in Antibes, and Safra panicked and said that they wanted to kill him because he had opened up to the FBI. It is reliably known that immediately after this conversation the banker left for his “armored” residence in Monaco.

Less than a few months later, Edmond Safra died.

By the way, his villa on the Cote d'Azur was bought by an unknown Russian billionaire in 2008. The transaction amount was $736 million. This purchase was attributed to anyone, even Mikhail Prokhorov, but the name of the new owner was never revealed.

Faithful Jew

Safra was not only committed to the Jewish faith, he believed that it was necessary to build new synagogues and maintain old ones because they were extremely important to the Jewish community. And he built them with his own money. It was erected not only in those places where there were many Jews, but also in cities such as, for example, Manila and Kinshasa. In addition, Safra's funds were used to build the first synagogue in Madrid in 500 years.

He never boasted of his wealth, donated money to Jewish charities around the world, and was especially generous in helping the Sephardic community. Hospitals and educational institutions were opened with his money. He was the main sponsor of the Holocaust Museum in Washington. A senior housing complex in New York and a brain research center at a university in Jerusalem are named after him. More than 700 people attended Edmond Safra's funeral. The most influential Jews around the world paid tribute to the memory of their great fellow tribesman and generous benefactor.

The Safra family has been involved in financial transactions in Aleppo, Istanbul and Alexandria for quite some time; In 1920, Edmond's father, Jacob Safra, founded the J. E. Safra Bank. At the age of 16, Safra was already working in his father's bank; He was engaged in transactions with precious metals and foreign trade.

In 1949, the Safras moved to Italy; there Edmond worked for some time in a local trading company. In 1952, Safra again changed his place of residence; They found a new home for themselves in Brazil. Already in 1955, Edmond and his father founded the first family Brazilian financial project.

In 1956, Edmond moved to Geneva, where he created the private bank Trade Development Bank. The enterprise, which initially cost about $1 million, was by 1980 valued at approximately $5 billion.

Edmond developed his financial empire quite actively; His income came from collaborating with wealthy people around the world.

In 1966, Safra created Republic National Bank.

The sale of Trade Development Bank to American Express for $450 million resulted in

exactly global legal battles; Safra won these battles - he managed to extract from his opponents a public apology and $8 million in compensation for the damage suffered. Edmond, by the way, donated the money he won to charity.

In the early 1990s, Safra's fortune was estimated at $2.5 billion. Edmond has always paid great attention to charitable projects; One of these projects, the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation, subsequently received his entire fortune. The fund currently supports several hundred projects in 50 countries; funds are used to support educational, scientific, medical, religious, cultural and humanitarian activities.

Safra has always been an active apologist for the Jewish faith; Among other things, he truly believed in the importance of building new synagogues and maintaining old ones - in his opinion, synagogues were extremely important to the Jewish community as a whole. A whole series of synagogues built with Safra’s money were located in cities that had already been “developed” to some extent by Jews; however, in more remote regions - like Manila and

inshasa (Kinshasa) – Edmond built synagogues quite actively. Thus, it was with Edmond’s money that a new synagogue was built in Madrid - the first in 500 years.

Edmond Safra died on December 3, 1999; banker and nurse Vivian Torrente suffocated from smoke during a fire at the Edmond estate. Quite quickly it became clear that the fire started due to someone’s ill will; A suspect, nurse Ted Maher, who worked with Torrente on the night shift, was soon arrested. In 2002, Maher was found guilty of his crime. The nurse himself claimed that Safra’s estate was attacked by two unknown men in masks; unable to cope with the complex defense system of the estate, they decided to start a fire. Prosecutors argued that Maher himself organized the fire, most likely in order to heroically deal with it in the future and thereby gain the respect of the Safra family; the flames, however, got out of control and Maher had to quickly change plans. Maher's lawyer later confirmed the prosecution's case; The defense tried to rely on the fact that Ted did not plan to kill Edmond Safra in any case - however, this did not help them much

DEATH IN MONACO

Christopher Dickey, Russell Watson

Two masked men allegedly entered a house located in an exclusive area of ​​Monaco and set it on fire. A famous banker involved in international financial transactions died there. Who needed Edmond Safra's death?

From the front, the six-story building, called Belle Epoque, resembles an impregnable fortress, a refuge for the rich who shun society. If you go around the building from the other side, it becomes clear that they could easily penetrate it from the rear and kill Edmond Safra.

The city-principality of Monaco rests on a huge cliff, and the houses there literally stand on each other’s shoulders. Behind the Belle Epoque is a hotel, from the terrace of which it is easy to move to the third floor of the neighboring Belle Epoque, and from there, through the barred balconies, you can reach the apartments occupied by Safra on the two upper floors of the building. It was on the top of these two floors that the billionaire banker suffocated in smoke when two masked men set his home on fire in the early morning.

At the end of the week after Safra's murder, the circumstances of what happened were still mysterious. When the criminals entered Safra's apartment, he and nurse Vivian Torrente, who was on duty with the 67-year-old banker who suffered from Parkinson's disease, locked themselves in the bathroom. They remained there for more than two hours. They did not leave the bathroom even after a fire broke out in the apartment and the criminals fled. There, rescuers discovered the bodies of Safra and his 52-year-old nurse when they entered the smoke-filled apartment.

The incident was reported by the second of the medical workers on duty with Safra, an American, 41 years old, whose name has not yet been made public. According to him, the criminals entered Safra's house through the infirmary, equipped next to his bedroom, on the top floor of the apartment. They were armed only with knives, and the nurse began to fight them. He managed to escape from them and escape down the stairs. On the way, he woke up Vivian Torrente, who immediately took Safra into the bathroom, where they locked themselves. When the nurse reached the lobby, it was discovered that he had superficial wounds to his abdomen and left leg. Police later found a bloody knife with blood stains on it. There is no information about fingerprints yet.

Apart from the nurse, no one saw the criminals. None of the surveillance cameras ubiquitous in Monaco recorded them. This single witness only mentioned the fire at the end of the day, when the police came to the hospital to question him. The flames were already blazing in Safra’s apartments.

Who could want Safra dead? Initial guesses concerned the Russian mafia. Safra's Republic National Bank, the third-largest New York bank, had been a big player in the Russian securities market for several years. Several years ago, individuals with a reputation for money laundering used it for their own purposes, after which Republic Bank began to be wary of any suspicious transactions. Last year, it was he who drew the attention of American authorities to the fact that the Bank of New York allegedly serves as a channel for money laundering. Last October, Republic Bank closed many of its Russian accounts as the ailing and childless banker prepared to sell his banking business to a British holding company for $9.85 billion. An American expert, well versed in everything related to money laundering, suggested that Safra was killed in order to delay the sale of the bank and gain time to complete some dubious Russian deal.

But this is just one theory. Starting a fire is an unreliable way to kill someone, especially in a home equipped with a reliable security system. This suggests an unprofessionally organized attempt at robbery or kidnapping, and the arson was supposed to cover up the traces of a failed crime.

Safra came from a family of hereditary Jewish bankers who were accustomed to conducting risky business deals. His father, Jacob Safra, was born in Aleppo (Syria) and worked in a family-owned bank that, before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, financed the shipment of camel caravans and the gold trade (in Arabic, “safra” means “yellow”). After the First World War, Safra's family moved to the more cosmopolitan Beirut, where Edmond was born in 1932. At the age of 16, the young man dropped out of school and began working in his father’s bank. He had to translate telegrams coming from abroad, and thus he mastered the English language. After the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, many Jews, including Safra, fled the Arab world. The banker and her family moved first to Italy and then to Brazil. Edmond was 21 by that time and was helping his father found a bank.

A few years later, Edmond Safra created the Trade Development Bank (Trade Development Bank) in Switzerland. He himself, like his clients, was a conservative in financial matters - he sought not so much to obtain high profits as to preserve his capital. In 1966, Safra founded the Republic National Bank and attracted a large number of depositors with a cheap trick: he gave them color televisions as bonuses, while requiring customers to purchase certificates of deposit, which earned a small interest. This more than paid for the cost of the televisions. Safra continued to make money the old-fashioned way - he put investors' money into circulation.

Safra married late, 44 years old, to the Brazilian widow Lily Monteverde; they did not have their own children. He liked to say that his children, his life, were his banks. In addition to the house in Monaco, he had houses in New York, Paris and Geneva. But he never flaunted his wealth, donating money to Jewish charities around the world, especially those that provided assistance to Sephardi Jews (emigrants from the Arab world). Banks were also his “hobby,” as he liked to say.

In 1983, Safra sold Trade Development Bank to American Express Bank (AMEX) for $550 million in securities, remaining as head of the bank. However, he did not work well with the aggressive management of AMEX and in 1984 left the business, selling the securities he owned to new owners, losing $135 million.

In 1988, he founded a rival bank, Safra Republic Holdings, and soon rumors spread from AMEX that Safra was doing business with drug and arms money launderers. Safra sued AMEX for libel, but AMEX chose to settle the matter peacefully, without trial, and paid $8 million to the charities named by Safra. It was presented as if the rumors defaming Safra came from minor bank employees...

Around the same time, the Drug Enforcement Administration found it necessary to investigate allegations that an investor was laundering money through an account at Republic Bank. A report obtained by Newsweek in 1989 revealed that a Zurich-based foreign exchange firm was laundering money from Middle Eastern drug and arms dealers through an account held at Republic Bank. However, neither Safra nor his bank were charged. As Stanley Arkin, Safra's lawyer in New York, recently said, the claim that Safra was laundering dirty money was a fabrication intended to discredit the banker. After this episode, Safra resolutely avoided dealing with dubious money. To protect his reputation, he organized an elaborate, extensive system that allowed him to identify suspicious financial transactions and report them to the authorities. Cooperation with the latter also included informing American officials about Russian clients who transferred money through the Republic Bank and the Bank of New York. Three people have been charged with money laundering through the Bank of New York. A former bank employee was arrested and accused of giving false statements to investigators who interrogated him. The bank itself was not charged with illegal actions.

By 1998, Safra was completely disillusioned with Russia. When the Kremlin defaulted, refusing to repay a significant portion of its monetary obligations, Republic Bank wrote off a loss of $191 million. After this, Safra decided to sell his banks to a large English bank, HSBC. Last October, Republic closed many of its Russian accounts.

According to one French news agency, Safra was warned that an attempt was being made on his life. It was not specified where the threat came from. The banker's main bodyguard, Samuel Cohen, was released from duty on the day of the tragedy because the family thought that they were completely safe at Belle Epoque. Alas, Safra's fortress turned out to be death row when the apartment filled with smoke and flames burst through the roof.

One thing is clear in this tragedy: the banker did not have to die at all. Both he and his caregiver had cell phones at their disposal and made repeated calls from the bathroom. Lily Safra, hiding in her bedroom at the other end of the hallway, told her husband by phone that help had already arrived. However, after hearing a noise outside the bathroom door and apparently deciding that the criminals were still in the apartment, Safra refused to leave. Police and firefighters broke down the bathroom door and found two bodies there.

Newsweek

The Life and Times of a Billionaire Banker:

At the age of 16, Safra dropped out of school and joined the family firm. In 1966, he founded the Republic National Bank and made a fortune. Recently, a childless, sick banker sold his bank to an English competitor.

Edmond Safra:

67 years old. Net worth $2.5 billion. The main controlled enterprises are Safra Republic Holding in Luxembourg and Republic New York Corporation.

Business methods are an old-fashioned method of doing business through connections with some of the richest people in the world.

Personal property - houses in Monaco, New York, Paris and Geneva. Married to Brazilian Lily Monteverde. The couple did not have their own children.

His “children” were his banks:

Edmond and Lily at a reception they gave in their luxurious New York apartment in the month before the banker's death.

On Fifth Avenue:

Safra first saw this building when he bought a hat. He liked it so much that he decided to purchase it and locate the headquarters of the Republic of New York Corporation there.

Monthly literary and journalistic magazine and publishing house.

A Monaco court found his personal bodyguard, American Ted Mayer, to be the sole culprit in the death of 67-year-old banker Edmond Safra. During the investigation, various versions of the mysterious death of one of the richest people on the planet were considered. Investigators were also working on the “Russian trace”. The banker and the banker's son, Edmond Safra, was lucky in life and in business until the last day, which turned out to be December 3, 1999. By this time, the businessman’s personal fortune, according to the most conservative estimates, was estimated at $2.7 billion, and the assets of the Republic National Bank of New York, which he controlled, amounted to 175 billion. Most of the capital was acquired by Safra thanks to his hereditary ability to “make money” in any situation. The foundation of the family's prosperity was laid by Edmond's father, the Lebanese Jew Jacob Safra. In 1920, in Brazil, untouched by the First World War, he founded a private bank that financed food supplies to hungry Europe. On the eve of the global economic crisis of 1929, Jacob moved with his family and money to his historical homeland - the Middle East. In the Syrian city of Aleppo, he invested in maritime oil transportation. Born in Beirut in 1932, Edmond Safra joined the family business at the age of 16 - in the late 1940s, he helped his father export capital from Arab countries dissatisfied with the emergence of the state of Israel to Italy, which was experiencing a post-war industrial boom. In 1956, Safra Jr. moved to Geneva, where he opened the private Trade Development Bank. His clients included Arabs, Europeans and Americans. It was connections in the United States that helped Edmond Safra to found a subsidiary of the Geneva bank there in 1966 - Republic National Bank of New York. 15 years later, this bank controlled the American Express credit card system and was actively involved in the global gold trade. By this time, Safra, who had Brazilian and Swiss citizenship, lived, as they say, in three houses - in Geneva, New York and on the French Riviera. Despite all the temptations of wealth, the millionaire banker led an almost reclusive life. His safety was ensured by a whole detachment of Israeli bodyguards. Nevertheless, in the late 1980s, the suspicious banker moved to live in “the calmest country in the world” - the Principality of Monaco. Since then, Safra's main refuge has been a vault-like armored apartment on the fifth floor of his Belle Epoque business complex in Monte Carlo. On December 3, 1999, at 4.50 a.m., the Monaco fire department received a signal of smoke on the fifth floor of the Belle Epoque. At 5.03, Safra’s personal bodyguard, 41-year-old US citizen, retired Green Beret Ted Mayer, called the police, reporting a fire and a terrorist attack on the building. A bloodied Mayer told police that two masked assailants shot at him. According to him, the attackers entered the building, started an arson and rushed to the owner’s personal apartments. The armored entrance to the living quarters was blocked from the inside. It took another two hours to get inside and put out the fire. At 7.45, the bodies of Edmond Safra and nurse Vivian Torren, who was on duty at the apartment that night, were found in the bathroom, suffocated from smoke. Two days later, Mayer gave his first testimony - earlier the investigation had established that his wounds were not gunshots, but stab wounds, and besides, the video cameras installed in the Belle Epoque did not record any traces of the “terrorists.” Mayer admitted that he staged a performance: he set fire to a trash basket and then inflicted several wounds on himself with a knife. According to the defendant, the final part of the show was supposed to be “saving the boss from the villains” and, as a result, generous bonuses. However, in pursuit of greater verisimilitude, Mayer overdid it and lost control of the situation. The same version was heard at the trial of Mayer, which recently ended in Monte Carlo. French judges specially invited to the trial, together with three local juries, sentenced Mayer to 10 years in prison. But the journalists covering the process paid attention to many “blank spots.” First of all, we are talking about the delicate facts of the biography of Safra, who had good reason to fear for his life. Thus, back in 1989, the US Customs Service and the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency suspected that the Republic National Bank of New York was involved in laundering drug dollars from the notorious Medellin Cartel of Colombia. Then the matter died down. But nine years later, it was Safra's bank - a competitor of the Bank of New York - that informed the FBI about the latter's involvement in laundering funds coming from Russia. Then, in 1998, an American with a mysterious biography, Ted Mayer, appeared in Safra’s security. As the investigation found, in 1979, 21-year-old Mayer entered the Las Vegas Police Academy, from where he was expelled “of his own free will” a few months later. He then enlisted in one of the most prestigious units of the US Army - the 82nd Airborne Division, and a few years later was transferred to the super-elite unit of the Green Berets. Those wishing to get there undergo a thorough check - both medical and by the FBI. However, by the end of the 1990s, Mayer was decommissioned for “health reasons” and got a job as an orderly at a hospital at Columbia University in the United States. There - again according to the official version - a retired special forces soldier accidentally met Safra's granddaughter. Under her patronage, he got a job in his grandfather’s personal security as a bodyguard with a salary of 180 thousand dollars a year. Mayer’s “inappropriate behavior” in this position has repeatedly caused criticism from the security chief. All these details suggested that both the Colombian drug mafia and Russian criminal circles were interested in Safra’s death (note: Safra’s banks had been cooperating with the USSR and then with Russia since the early 1980s, and their owner at the height of the 1998 default met secretly with oligarchs of the Yeltsin era several times). However, although these versions were mentioned at the trial, they were not developed. The conflict in Safra’s own family also remained unattended. A few weeks before his death, he decided to sell his banking empire for $2.7 billion to the Honkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation consortium, which his younger brother Josef strongly opposed. Edmond's death prevented the deal from being completed in full. As a result, Joseph, having paid his brother’s widow a generous compensation of $700 million, retained control over most of the family capital. One way or another, the version of a “lone killer with an unbalanced psyche” completely satisfied all parties - including, apparently, the only accused who did not want to appeal.