Arsonists sought in Safra death
By Jerusalem Post Staff And News Agencies
JERUSALEM (December 5) - Edmond J. Safra, the head of an international banking empire, suffocated to death Friday morning after two hooded intruders penetrated a steel door and an elaborate security system in his fortified Monaco penthouse and set fire to the building.
Safra was still alive when firefighters arrived at the burning apartment, some two hours after the intruders entered. But he ignored their pleas to come out of a locked bathroom, fearing it was a ruse, and then suffocated, Monaco's chief prosecutor said yesterday.
Police said they were searching for the knife-wielding intruders who set the fire that killed Safra, 67, and his nurse, Viviane Torrent, a 52-year-old US citizen of Philippine origin, who had barricaded themselves in the bathroom.
Safra's wife, Lily, and her granddaughter hid elsewhere, and escaped unharmed. A male nurse, who called the police, received minor knife wounds in his leg and stomach during a scuffle with the intruders.
One of the world's wealthiest men and a benefactor of numerous Sephardi and other causes, Safra also had homes in Geneva, Paris, and New York. Suffering from Parkinson's disease, he was thought to be planning to retire after expanding into an empire the banking business that had been started by his family under the Ottomans. Safra was born in Beirut of a Jewish-Lebanese family that has banks around the world. His brothers, Joseph and Moise, own shares in banks in Israel, Brazil, and the United States.
The motives for the assault remain unknown. Officials ruled out robbery, but it was not clear whether the intruders intended to kidnap or kill Safra.
Safra was not registered as a "threatened person" in Monaco, but according to The New York Post, he had expanded his private security, composed of former Israeli commandos, after receiving death threats. Israeli officials, in light of Safra's multimillion-dollar dealings in the Arab world, are investigating whether the attack may be linked to Arab extremists, the New York tabloid reported.
The attack came as Republic National Bank of New York, which he founded in 1966, was concluding a $9.9 billion deal to be acquired by HSBC Holdings, the largest bank in Britain. The bank had sustained losses in the recent Latin American banking crisis and the collapse of the Russian economy.
There was speculation that the attack was linked to the fact that Republic last year tipped the FBI to suspicious trading in accounts by a company called Benex. That led to an international probe of Russian money-laundering that is now focused on the Bank of New York.
Safra lived in a luxury duplex penthouse in a six-story building on Avenue d'Ostende, a winding road used during the Grand Prix de Monaco Formula 1 race. The lower floors housed the local offices of Safra's Republic and the French bank Paribas. It is a short walk from the palace of the Grimaldis, Monaco's royal family, and is near the Monte Carlo Casino. Monaco, a tiny principality on the Riviera, is known as a tax haven and playground for the wealthy.
According to the male nurse, the only witness of the events, the fire broke out after the two intruders, armed with knives, broke into the apartment, wounding the nurse in the abdomen when he tried to stop them. Police were questioning Safra's bodyguard, who was supposed to be - but was not - in the apartment at the time of the attack. The bodyguard was not named.
Before he died, Safra spoke to his wife twice from the bathroom using his mobile phone, and in one conversation also told her to lock herself away, officials said.
The fire started in a wastebasket in the flat, and smoke billowed into the bathroom through the vent of a fire-detection unit.
"The firefighters knocked on the [bathroom] door, but Safra thought it was the assailants and refused to come out," Monaco's chief prosecutor Daniel Serdet said.
He did not explain why the firefighters did not then break the door down and rescue Safra and Torrent.
Serdet said that, around 5 a.m., the male nurse alerted police of the presence of two armed men in the apartment.
When police arrived, a fire was raging inside the building and had spread to the domed roof. Rescuers were unable to reach the victims, who were still alive, until 7:15 a.m. [7:45 a.m. in fire report], the prosecutor said. Firefighters went through the nearby Hotel Ermitage's main lobby and gained access to the burning roof from the hotel's top-floor terrace, but needed some three hours to extinguish the blaze, which left the building's roof a twisted mass of broken beams and melted copper sheeting.
Serdet said a decision would probably be taken tomorrow on what the official basis for the investigation would be - break-in, arson, or murder.
"The investigation will probably be opened on criminal grounds, most likely on Monday, but for the moment the inquiry rests on a single witness, the [male] nurse," he said.
"One element intriguing investigators is that the usual bodyguard was absent at the time of the events."
Asked if the nurse, recovering in hospital, was a suspect, Serdet said: "He is a privileged witness."
Benex laundered billions and Lily's attorney Stanley Arkin defended Natasha Kagalovsky of BONY in the ensuing case. Natasha's husband Konstantin Kagalovsky was Russia's IMF representative.
The chief prosecutor of Geneva was cited in the Times' Russia Journal [UK] as saying Safra was killed for cooperating with the FBI regarding the laundering of $4.8 billion in IMF loans to Russia through Republic Bank.
Monaco's chief inspector of police was put through the FBI National Academy, January-March, 1999 [Safra sang to FBI August, 1998; sang his final aria December, 1999].
With the opening of the *FBI Academy in the summer of 1972, National Academy classes were provided on a quarterly basis consisting of 11 weeks of training for upper and mid-level law enforcement officers. The curriculum focuses on leadership and management training and consists of courses relating to Management Science, Behavioral Science, Law, Education, Forensic Science and Health/Fitness.
Yet Monaco chief inspector Olivier Jude supervised the three-day interrogation of Ted Maher, from which the American emerged with facial bruising, bruised occipital, bruising of the toes, having been held in four-point restraint, catheterized, deprived of sleep for three days--during which time his wife was kidnapped, her U.S. Passport stolen and used to threaten Ted with her strip-searching, torture and indefinite detention. Under Jude, Maher was shown secretly-taken photos of his children and played secretly-recorded tapes of their voices as implied threat upon their safety.
Thus was the original false confession in French (which Maher does not read, write or speak) extorted.
Through three years of isolation, held incommunicado regarding the events of December 3, 1999, screamed at by judge d'instruction Patricia Richet, "I know you will be found guilty!" (as she tore up letters from his children), Maher was warned he must adhere to the original false confession or be imprisoned for life.
Even at that, the Monaco police still awakened Maher every 20 to 40 minutes during the trial to produce a dark-eyed wreck of a human being--ten days of such treatment!
Sleep-deprivation is forbidden by the Supreme Court of Israel by IDF on its prisoners.
And the above article references the firemen entering through the Hotel Hermitage--thus did the intruders avoid the street cams.
The article mentions "Arab terrorists"--Monaco police questioned--but released--two Arab men in the underground parking garage.
The article notes the absence of Safra's bodyguards--Lily sent them all (11) to La Leopolda per Israeli journalist Boaz Bismuth.
Monaco police conveniently "lost" their emergency call tapes for the 3d (but had tapes for the 2d and 4th).
Monaco police destroyed Ted's original clothing and substituted brand-new, uncut, unbloodied, inappropriate sportswear.
And how excellent that Jude learned "forensic science" at the FBI National Academy. So that he could ignore it in this case.
Vivian died of strangulation per the world-class expert forensic/DNA authority Dr. Michael J. Baden.
Vivian was spattered on bra, panties and nursing cap/barrette with Edmond's blood.
And from the account of the trial:
. The traces of male ADN not identified, found under the nails of Edmond Safra, will remain forever a mystery.
Why? Because anything not framing the American scapegoat is ignored.
The "trial" was a Stalinesque masquerade.
The pathetic prisoner was forced to parrot the extorted false confession.
Anne Williamson of Contagion said the laundering benefited the Clintons, Rubin, Summers, the Harvard econ faculty and a half dozen Russian reformers.
After Safra sang to the FBI with its Clinton-appointed director, the chief inspector of Monaco is brought to Quantico for eleven weeks; then supervises the scapegoating of an innocent American veteran in Safra's death.
It's Ambrosia:
Safra sang to the FBI who trained chief inspector Jude
To extort the false confession by means scientifically crude.
Nice, nice, very nice
So many people in the same device.