Gilded Lily

by Isabel Vincent

  If they believed in omens—and Edmond certainly did—maybe the Onassis death might have given the Safras a few moments of pause. Were they not tempting the evil eye with such a grandiose celebration—so monumental, so costly, and so public!

  But 1988 had dawned with such hope. After years of sleepless nights and the agony over his ill-fated decision to sell TDB to American Express, they were back on the society track, attending openings, galas, and fundraisers around the world. Edmond was rebuilding what would turn into a stronger, more lucrative empire on the ashes of a costly mistake; he was reclaiming his most valued employees from TDB and he had started a new bank. He was also building a good case against his former employer—a case he knew he would eventually win. So after the parties, and after a few business meetings with old Halabim clients he had invited to La Leopolda, Edmond looked forward to a few days off in his palatial new home with Lily’s six grandchildren.

  But their newfound happiness and relief were extremely short-lived.

  THE ARGUMENT THAT escalated into a screaming match between Claudio and Evelyne on the morning of Friday, February 17, 1989, had actually begun at their house on the Gavea mountain in Rio de Janeiro the night before. As usual, Claudio had had a particularly grueling day at work. Simon Alouan, a former professor of mathematics from Beirut who had been appointed by Edmond to head up Alfredo’s old company in 1973, was not known for his manners. He could be rough and obnoxious at times, and he was generally feared by everyone in upper management at the appliance chain. Everybody knew that Alouan hated Claudio—hated him with a passion. After all, Claudio was everything he was not—a well-educated, well-mannered member of the Brazilian elite, and certainly a mama’s boy, who had been parachuted into his job as head of marketing because of his mother’s influence at the company. Although Lily, as majority shareholder, was technically Alouan’s boss, Alouan openly despised her as well. When it came to discussing business matters and the future of the company, he spoke only to Edmond, a fellow Halabim and his most important benefactor. It was Edmond who had brought Alouan to São Paulo to help run one of the Safra family’s investment houses in the early days. Alouan, who hailed from an impoverished Halabim family, was eternally grateful to Edmond, who had financed his education in Lebanon.

  “Edmond brought Alouan to Brazil and gave him something like 20 percent of the Ponto Frio business,” recalled Albert Nasser. “He always reported to Edmond and refused to take Lily seriously. Every time that she said she was coming to Rio, Alouan would make sure he was on a plane to Europe. With Claudio, he used to put him down all the time and let everyone at the company know that he was good for nothing.”

  Claudio’s friend Guilherme Castello Branco also recalled the disputes between Claudio and Alouan at the company. “Alouan was very rough, and it was clear that he really despised Claudio,” he said.

  Usually by the end of a workday at Ponto Frio Claudio was a nervous wreck. He yelled at Evelyne over the slightest problem and lost his temper with his two young sons—four-year-old Raphael and fifteen-month-old Gabriel. He was looking forward to taking a few days off on this summer long weekend and was glad that they had decided to go with their friends Rubem and Ana Maria Andreazza to their summerhouse in Angra dos Reis.

  On that muggy Friday morning, as the nanny and the housekeeper readied the children for the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Angra, a beach town southwest of Rio where the coastline is dotted with hundreds of small islands, Claudio and Evelyne picked up their argument of the night before.

  “Evelyne was truly an annoying person,” said one of the couple’s friends. “Claudio, who was a wonderful person, was a henpecked husband. After Claudio married her, a lot of his friends stopped going to the house in Gavea. They were always at each other’s throats.”

  The fight got so ugly that Claudio suggested they drive to Angra in separate cars. He stormed out of the house with Raphael, who had begged Claudio to take him in the car with him. Claudio and Raphael piled into his jeep, a Brazilian-made Chevrolet, to pick up his friend Rubem. Raphael, who loved Rubem, wanted to sit in the front with his father and his friend. Claudio reached in the back to pick up his son and placed him gently between the two adult passengers. Evelyne, Ana Maria, and little Gabriel would drive ahead in a Ford Galaxy Ltd Landau, with Mario, the couple’s chauffeur. They would all meet in Angra in a few hours.

  Claudio drove fast, past the mansions and grand apartment blocks of the chic beachfront neighborhoods of Leblon and Ipanema, past the crowded favelas, or shantytowns, that cling to the mountainsides, and onto the potholed highway that was the only road to Angra dos Reis. Deep in conversation with Rubem, Claudio probably didn’t even notice the policia militar truck as it barreled into his lane on kilometer 17 of the Rio-Santos Highway near Itaguai, an impoverished municipality of half-finished brick and plywood houses that marks the halfway point from Rio de Janeiro to Angra dos Reis.

  Like Claudio, the driver of the police truck was going far too fast after negotiating a particularly difficult curve. Witnesses said the truck literally passed over the jeep, leaving it a mangled mess of metal.

  All three passengers in Claudio’s car were killed almost instantly; the impact crushed the Chevrolet, which erupted in flames, and ripped human limbs from their sockets. Claudio’s body was unrecognizable when a fire crew pulled him from the wreck. Body parts were strewn on the highway along with pieces of smoldering, twisted metal.

  Barely an hour after Evelyne and Ana Maria pulled into the summerhouse they started to worry about the jeep. Later, when a carload of their friends arrived, shaking their heads at the terrible accident they had just passed on the road, Evelyne feared the worst. Trembling, she demanded a description of the mangled vehicle that police and firefighters were trying to tow to the side of the road to relieve the snarling traffic of weekend travelers that the accident had caused. When her friends described the car, Evelyne drove back along the Rio-Santos Highway. Before she even saw the mangled vehicle, she saw the body parts strewn along the asphalt. When she recognized her little boy’s T-shirt, Evelyne started to scream. She never forgave herself for allowing little Raphael to travel with his father. Before the accident, he had always driven with her.

  The news of the accident was the lead item on TV Globo’s Jornal Nacional nightly news program that evening, largely because Claudio’s friend Rubem Andreazza was the son of the former minister of the interior in Brazil’s last military government, which had ended four years earlier. In Sunday’s O Globo, the paid obituaries took up nearly two broadsheet pages. Ponto Frio communicated their “profound sadness at the sudden death of our dear director Claudio Cohen and his son Raphael.” The Bloch, Sigelmann, Cohen, and Safra families noted their “great sorrow.” But the saddest announcement came from the grieving mother and widow, Evelyne. It was addressed to Fayale and Cloclo, the names that fifteen-month-old Gabriel used for his older brother and father, respectively: “We will love you always.”

  The funeral was on Sunday because Jews cannot be buried on the Sabbath. The extra day also allowed Edmond and Lily enough time to make the trip to Rio from Geneva, where Edmond was plotting his strategy against American Express. Edmond wept openly when he received the phone call from Rio informing him of the accident; Lily was inconsolable.

  The burials of Claudio and Raphael occurred just before noon in Rio’s high summer, and the air at the Jewish cemetery in Caju, on a bleak stretch of Avenida Brasil in the city’s gritty suburbs, was thick and muggy. The mourners sweated in their suits and watched helplessly as Evelyne threw herself sobbing onto the coffin of Raphael, who was four years and four months old when he died. The impact had fractured his skull. The cause of death, according to the autopsy, was an internal hemorrhage. Claudio, who was thirty-five years old at the time of death, died of a similar injury—the sudden impact dislocated and fractured his cranium. He also suffered massive internal bleeding.

  Among the group of dark-suited mourners was Claudio’s boss, Simon Alouan. But
he only made it to the gates of the cemetery to pay his respects to the family before he was ordered to leave by Claudio’s sister, Adriana.

  “I want to know why you are here!” she screamed hysterically. “You killed him. You’re the cause of this. Please, just leave right now.”

  Adriana echoed what Lily was also feeling. If Alouan hadn’t been such a tough taskmaster, if he hadn’t berated Claudio the way he had, perhaps Claudio would not have been under so much stress, perhaps he wouldn’t have argued with his wife before getting into his jeep, Lily reasoned. Desperate to lay blame for the death of her beloved son and grandson, Lily also struck out at Alouan. But if she raged against him, she did so quietly. Perhaps she even suggested to Edmond that Alouan could be replaced. The problem with Alouan was that he was doing a good job. Not since Alfredo’s day had the company seen such good returns. No, Alouan would stay, ordered Edmond. Lily would have to wait for the best time to strike. It would take fourteen years, but in the end Lily would get her revenge against the man she accused of killing her son.

  Although the Cohen and Safra families were devastated by Claudio’s death, it was Alfredo’s son, Carlos, who went into a deep mourning after the death of his stepbrother. Since their years together at the Millfield School, where Carlos was sent at nine years old immediately following the death of Alfredo, Claudio had embraced the younger Carlos as his little brother. “I was so comfortable with him,” said Carlos. “He was an extraordinary person.”

  Photographic Insert

  Lily Watkins as a teenager in her school picture. Her birth date is erroneously noted as November 17, 1934. (Courtesy of Colegio Anglo-Americano, Rio de Janeiro)

  Wolf White Watkins, Lily’s father, from his Brazilian identification papers, 1946. (National Archives, Rio de Janeiro)

  Annita Watkins, Lily’s mother, from her Brazilian identification papers, 1942. (National Archives, Rio de Janeiro)

  Birthday party of Alfredo Grunberg (Monteverde) in Romania, circa 1930. Alfredo is the child sitting in the front. (Courtesy Monteverde family archives)

  Alfredo Monteverde at his summer home in Aguas Lindas, Brazil, undated. (Courtesy Monteverde family archives)

  Alfredo, Regina, and Rosy in Rio de Janeiro, mid-1940s. (Courtesy Monteverde family archives)

  One of Ponto Frio’s stores in Rio de Janeiro. (Courtesy Monteverde family archives)

  Alfredo and Lily leaving for their beach house at Aguas Lindas, Brazil. (Courtesy Monteverde family archives)

  Alfredo and companion Silvia Bastos Tigre in an undated photograph. (Monteverde family archives)

  Lily and the children in a 1967 portrait. From left to right: Carlos, Adriana, Claudio, Lily, and Eduardo, Rio de Janeiro. (Courtesy Monteverde family archives)

  Alfredo and Silvia Bastos Tigre (in sunglasses) lunching with friends at the Rio Yacht Club, Rio de Janeiro, where Alfredo kept his boats. (Courtesy Monteverde family archives)

  The last photo of Alfredo Monteverde taken in Italy in July 1969, a month before his death. Standing in the back: Rosy, Alfredo. In the front, Giuseppe Jermi, Regina Monteverde, Lily. (Courtesy Monteverde family archives)

  Police photo of the revolver used in the death of Alfredo Monteverde, showing four out of six bullets in the chamber, August 25, 1969, Rio de Janeiro. (Police Department, Tenth District Precinct, Rio de Janeiro)

  Alfredo Monteverde lying dead on his bed at his home in Rio de Janeiro. (Police Department, Tenth District Precinct, Rio de Janeiro)

  Lily and her eldest son, Claudio, the boy she called her “Jesus Christ, Esquire” at the Millfield School, Somerset, England, 1971. (Courtesy Samuel Bendahan)

  Lily and her daughter Adriana, Somerset, England, 1971. (Courtesy Samuel Bendahan)

  Samuel and Lily in France, 1971, shortly before their marriage. (Courtesy Samuel Bendahan)

  Lily and Samuel shortly after their marriage at the registry office in Acapulco. Lily is wearing Samuel’s “Alain Delon hat,” January 31, 1972. (Courtesy Samuel Bendahan)

  Samuel and Lily dining with friends in Acapulco shortly after their wedding, February 1972. (Courtesy Samuel Bendahan)

  Samuel Bendahan and Lily Bendahan shortly after their marriage in Acapulco, February 1972. (Courtesy Samuel Bendahan)

  Lily and Samuel on a yacht in Acapulco, 1972. (Courtesy Samuel Bendahan)

  Acapulco marriage license of Samuel Bendahan and Lily Watkins, January 31, 1972. (Courtesy Samuel Bendahan)

  Lily and business associate Felix Klein in Brazil, February 1972. (Courtesy Samuel Bendahan)

  Lily and her son Eduardo in Rio de Janeiro, February 1972. (Courtesy Samuel Bendahan)

  Divorce decree, Lily Bendahan and Samuel Bendahan, February 6, 1973. (Second Judicial District Court of the State of Nevada, County of Washoe)

  Evelyne Bloch Sigelmann and Claudio Cohen at their wedding in Rio de Janeiro in May 1983. Edmond Safra is pictured on the left. (Agencia O Globo)

  Lily and Edmond Safra at wedding of Lily’s eldest son, Claudio Cohen, in Rio de Janeiro, May 1983. (Agencia O Globo)

  From left to right: Adolfo Bloch, Inês Bloch (mother of Evelyne Bloch Sigelmann), Mario Cohen (Lily’s first husband and Claudio’s father, standing behind Inês, to the right), and Oscar Bloch (Evelyne’s father) at the wedding of Claudio and Evelyne, May 1983 in Rio de Janeiro. (Agencia O Globo)

  Vicky Safra and her husband, Joseph Safra, at the wedding of Claudio and Evelyne, May 1983, Rio de Janeiro. (Agencia O Globo)

  Lily and Edmond Safra leave a luncheon at the Metropolitan Club in New York, September 1990. (Photograph by Marina Garnier)

  Lily and Edmond Safra at an awards dinner at the Pierre Hotel in New York, honoring the king of Spain, hosted by the Elie Wiesel Foundation, October 1991. (Photograph by Marina Garnier)

  Later, it was Claudio who supported Carlos without reservation when he decided to marry a French Muslim woman named Isis. Like his father before him, Alfredo’s adopted son would marry his wife not once but three times—twice in Las Vegas and once in Israel, after Isis spent time learning the principles of Judaism on a kibbutz.

  Still, despite Isis’s best efforts to please Carlos’s family after they met in Paris in 1987, relations between Carlos, Lily, and Edmond became somewhat strained. Edmond, whom Carlos would describe as a “second father,” had taken Carlos under his wing when the boy was thirteen. Edmond became his religious mentor and oversaw the study for his bar mitzvah. When he married Isis after a whirlwind romance, Carlos feared Edmond’s disapproval so much that he preferred to sever family ties rather than risk raising his ire. Relations between the Monteverde newlyweds and the Safra couple remained diplomatic but somewhat frosty. But Claudio embraced Isis with such ease that after his death, the Monteverdes named one of their girls Claudia in his memory.

  Of course, it was Lily who took Claudio’s death the hardest. She was so distraught that she all but disappeared from high society. “Lily is made of steel,” said an aging Copacabana socialite who knew Lily well in Rio. “But she was passionate about her son and grandson. I know that it really hurt her to lose Claudio and Raphael.”

  BOTH EDMOND AND Lily were in deep mourning for Claudio and their grandson. They returned to New York and disappeared from the social scene. It wasn’t until a year later that their social life began to get back to normal. When they returned to La Leopolda, they hosted an intimate dinner for their friend former first lady Nancy Reagan and the designer Karl Lagerfeld.

  Edmond spent much of the year after the tragic events in Rio fighting his clandestine battle with American Express. The efforts paid off, as Edmond handily won his legal battles against the company in the summer of 1989. The coup de grâce came when Edmond’s lead attorney and investigator, Stanley Arkin, a streetwise legal scrapper, used his column in the New York Law Journal to question what kind of criminal fraud charges could befall a hypothetical company that did not cooperate in the investigations into a smear campaign that involved them. Of course, the hypothetical company was American Expres
s. Shortly after the column appeared, the company agreed to settle with Edmond. As part of the settlement, Edmond agreed not to use any of the information that he had uncovered about American Express before any government investigating agencies. The company, which had conducted a campaign of disinformation that led to defamatory articles about Edmond in the press, also paid Edmond $8 million, which went to several charities, including the United Way of America, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Hospital Cantonal de Geneve, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

  At first, in a pathetic attempt to save face, American Express admitted on July 28, 1989, to the campaign and said that it had paid Edmond $4 million. Three days later, the news emerged that American Express was actually paying $8 million. Company officials hastily explained that the first $4 million was meant as an apology and that the second $4 million was a gesture of good will.