BLIGHT AT THE OPERA (big spender is a crook)

NY POST ^ | May 28, 2005 | RICHARD WILNER

[Liz]

ALBERTO VILAR Fraud rap for money whiz.

Alberto Vilar, a hotshot millionaire money manager and the Metropolitan Opera's largest benefactor, was hauled before a federal judge yesterday on charges he stole $5 million from a client — and used part of the money to make a donation to his alma mater.

Vilar, 64, was nabbed by US postal inspectors Thursday after stepping off a plane at Newark Airport. His business partner, Gary Tanaka, 62, was also arrested as he relaxed at an East Side hotel.

Postal cops had been alerted to Vilar's alleged crimes by the client, who told agents the $5 million he invested with the money manager's Amerindo Investments three years ago had simply disappeared.

Instead of investing the cash, Vilar deposited it on June 20, 2002, into his personal Panamanian bank account, which was overdrawn by $428,122 at the time....

Vilar then used $540,000 of the victim's cash to make a donation to Washington & Jefferson College.......... W&J was going to name a building after its apparently deep-pocketed alum.......

Postal cops found that $177,000 of the victim's money was donated to the American Academy in Berlin.... (and) allegedly cashed a $17,000 check made out to himself and used another $14,640.08 of the unnamed victim's money to pay a caterer.

The Cuban native, who fled the island nation in 1959 as Fidel Castro seized power, started his financial career at a firm that would later become Drexel Burnham.

He opened his own investment firm in 1992.

.....Vilar has donated more than $200 million to various opera companies the world over......(and) include $50 million to the Kennedy Center, $45 million to the Met, $25 million to Covent Garden in London, $20 million to Russia's Kirov Opera and $10 million to Placido Domingo's L.A. Opera........

[nuconvert]

He's a giver and a taker