>>8129830 (lb)
Safra name caught my eye- Weirdest story in Vanity Fair 1999 - a multi Billionaire dead in a fire in Monaco? Locked in his bathroom? This Safra related to Eimond Safra?
n December 3, 1999, in Monte Carlo, Monaco, the multibillionaire banker Edmond J. Safra, along with one of his nurses, died of asphyxiation in a locked, bunker-like bathroom in a conflagration that engulfed his penthouse, atop a building housing the Republic National Bank of New York, which he had made final arrangements to sell a few days previously. Early accounts said that two hooded intruders had penetrated the apartment, which was as solid as a fortress, and stabbed a male nurse. The bizarre death made headlines everywhere and sent shock waves through the banking community, as well as through the principality of Monaco, probably the safest, most tightly controlled tax haven in the world for the very rich. There is one policeman for every 100 of its 30,000 inhabitants. You can barely take a step in Monte Carlo without being monitored by closed-circuit cameras, which are on the streets, in underpasses, in the halls of hotels, and in the casino. Three days after Safra’s death, Daniel Serdet, the attorney general and chief prosecutor of Monaco, announced that a male nurse named Ted Maher, from Stormville, New York, had confessed to setting the blaze that killed his employer in order to win favor with the banker. Serdet said that Maher had started a fire in a wastebasket in an effort to draw attention to himself. “He wanted to be a hero,” Serdet said. There were no hooded intruders, and the stab wounds in Maher’s abdomen and thigh were self-inflicted. Serdet released a statement to the press about Maher, saying that at the time of the fire he was highly agitated, “psychologically fragile and under the influence of medication.” Serdet concluded, “From this moment on we can exclude with certainty all [conjectures] of any international conspiracy.” Marc Bonnant, the lawyer for Safra’s widow, announced in Time magazine, “The fact that Maher is unstable became apparent to us only after the accident.” The damnation of Ted Maher, the low man on the nursing staff’s totem pole, had begun. In no time the case had been all tied up with a neat bow: the guilty party was in custody, and the principality of Monaco was safe again.