Gilded Lily

by Isabel Vincent

  This time, nobody bought the clunky PR move. “More and more it seems that American Express came kicking and screaming to its embarrassing settlement with Edmond Safra, the rival banker who used private detectives to discover that his former employer had mounted a smear campaign against him,” noted the New York Post. “Amex is determined not to seem any sorrier than it must, insiders say, since its first mea culpa offer was way below $4 million while Safra originally demanded a penance far above $8 million.”

  On August 4, 1989, Harry L. Freeman, an executive vice president of American Express known for his close ties to Jim Robinson III, resigned from the company after accepting “executive responsibility” for an investigation that led to the smear campaign against Edmond. Although officials at American Express told the New York Times that Freeman did not have personal knowledge of the campaign to discredit Edmond, he had ordered an investigation into his background.

  “A well-intentioned effort for which I had executive responsibility went awry,” said Freeman in his letter of resignation to Robinson. “Mistakes were made on my watch, and accordingly, I believe my decision to retire, while painful, is appropriate.”

  It’s unclear who at American Express knew about the smear campaign, stated the article in the New York Times, which questioned whether company employees were in fact “misrepresenting the situation to each other.”

  But it no longer mattered to Edmond Safra. The worst, he believed, was behind him, and he vowed that the next time he parted with any of his children, it would be over his dead body. A decade later, that was exactly what happened.

  SEVEN

  “When I Give Lily a Dollar, Lily Spends Two Dollars”

  THE EFFORT INVOLVED in drafting a last will and testament in Rio de Janeiro can be a daunting exercise in bureaucracy at the best of times. When you’re struck with a terminal illness and in a hurry, as Evelyne Sigelmann Cohen was in the fall of 1992, then it becomes a Herculean effort.

  The “public testament,” as it is known in Portuguese, is carefully typed by a clerk onto letterhead bearing the emblem of the state of Rio de Janeiro, the pages duly numbered and signed by five witnesses, each of whom must swear that they know the testator and affirm that what they are witnessing is the truth. All of this, including the typing, is conducted in the presence of a notary public, who then places the document—adorned with a seal and myriad stamps—in an official leather-bound folio.

  A month before she died, Evelyne, pale, weak and easily fatigued, quite literally dragged herself to a notary’s office in downtown Rio, accompanied by five witnesses, to draft her will. It was the last wish of a dying woman, and nobody dared deny her. It wasn’t that Evelyne was concerned about what would happen to the Gavea house or the money she had inherited from Claudio, although she did make provisions for all these assets in her will. What ultimately drove Evelyne to a dingy, airless office in downtown Rio, where she took a number and prepared to dictate her postmortem instructions, was her mother-in-law, Lily.

  In the year since she had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, Evelyne had worried about Lily. It was the anxiety and not the cancer that interrupted her sleep, tore up her insides, she told her friends. Specifically, she worried about what would happen to her five-year-old son, Gabriel, after she died. She had no doubt that Lily loved the little boy as she did her other grandchildren. Perhaps she even had a special fondness for Gabriel because he was the son of her beloved Claudio. But Evelyne fretted about Gabriel’s future. She was concerned about Lily’s imperious nature, about her need to control everyone around her. She knew that Lily had her own ideas for his upbringing that didn’t include allowing the child to stay in Brazil, close to familiar surroundings and the friends and family he had grown to love. Would she send him to an English boarding school as she had done with Alfredo’s boy, Carlos, in 1969? And how would Gabriel, an orphan after her death, react to being sent away?

  Evelyne couldn’t bear what she perceived as Lily’s control. Hadn’t Lily interfered with Claudio’s first marriage to Mimi?

  Evelyne had once joked to a friend that she assumed her every move was watched by Monaco.

  “It was common knowledge that the house was watched by headquarters in Monaco,” said a friend of Evelyne’s who did not want to be identified. “When it was clear that Evelyne would die, Lily began to take control of the situation.”

  There was no doubt she was dying. Less than a year after Claudio’s death, Evelyne was diagnosed with pericardial mesothelioma, an extremely rare form of cancer that attacks the membrane around the heart. In the early days of the disease, she had gone to New York for surgery, staying three months to recuperate, and telling herself that the worst was over. But the cancer returned, and by September 1992, she knew she didn’t have long to live. And so she set out the terms for Gabriel’s upbringing in her last will and testament. Perhaps she knew that the legal document was a feeble gesture, a flimsy weapon in the fight against Lily. But for a young woman who had lost nearly everything in the space of a few short years—a younger sister, a husband, and a son—it was a final accounting, an attempt to order the chaos, a powerful affirmation of her wishes.

  With feverish intensity, Evelyne dictated her instructions to the clerk: Parenting duties would be shared between her sister-in-law Adriana and Antonio Negreiros, an often unemployed actor and choreographer who had become her closest companion after Claudio’s death. She referred to Antonio, who had once worked as her personal trainer, as Gabriel’s “father.” Shortly after Claudio’s death, Antonio moved into the house in Gavea with Evelyne, and helped her raise her son.

  Gabriel would spend his school holidays with Antonio, and at sixteen would be allowed to choose where and with whom he wanted to live. If he was taken away to another country, his maternal grandparents and Antonio would need to be informed. “A separation between Gabriel and Antonio should be gradual,” wrote Evelyne. “Always tell Gabriel the truth, never half-truths. When Gabriel feels lonely, act with clarity and compassion, without trying to avoid the topic. After all, he has already had many separations.”

  The ultimate separation—from his mother—occurred on October 17, 1992, the day Evelyne died. For all her effort and concern, the plans and terms that she had so painstakingly set out for the future of her son effectively died with her.

  “Evelyne died on a Friday, and I told Gabriel about the death of his mother on the Saturday morning,” recalled Antonio. Gabriel went to sit in Antonio’s lap and wrapped his legs tightly around his surrogate father.

  Antonio was determined to carry out Evelyne’s last wishes. But in hindsight, he says he was naive, and should have predicted what was coming. Lily was not about to allow some minor actor/personal trainer in Rio de Janeiro to have anything to do with her grandson, especially now that Gabriel was sole heir to his father’s share of the family fortune.

  As Lily began to emerge from a year of deep mourning for her son, she and Edmond continued to travel between homes in New York, the south of France, and Switzerland. Although they busied themselves with their philanthropy, throwing lavish parties for good causes on two continents, they also took great pleasure in their grandchildren, inviting them for summer vacations at La Leopolda. After Claudio’s death, Lily redoubled her efforts with Gabriel and Evelyne, encouraging her to visit often with the little boy.

  ON THE AFTERNOON of Evelyne’s death, Antonio went to help the Bloch and Sigelmann families with the preparations for the funeral. He left Gabriel at the house in Gavea with his nanny, promising him that he would return shortly. When he returned a few hours later, the house was empty.

  Later Antonio learned that Mario, the chauffeur, picked up the child and the nanny and drove them to his “Uncle Watkins” home. In this case, Uncle Watkins was Lily’s brother Daniel, who always seemed to be charged with the family’s most difficult tasks. It’s not clear whether Lily ever bothered to read Evelyne’s will. No doubt she was convinced that she was looking out for Gabriel’s best intere
sts, which clearly did not include the boy being brought up by a perennially unemployed actor. Never mind that these were Evelyne’s last wishes. For Lily, Evelyne could not possibly have been of sound mind when she wrote her will, for why would she entrust her only son to this stranger?

  After Gabriel went to live with his relatives, Antonio tried every means possible to see the little boy. But his efforts were met with icy indifference. Every day for weeks, Antonio waited for Gabriel to emerge from Rio’s tony American School in the Gavea neighborhood where he had been enrolled. But the boy had already disappeared from his life. Months after Evelyne’s death, Antonio arranged to travel to Florida where Gabriel was going to be vacationing with his cousins at Disney World. Antonio tried to convince Adriana, now Gabriel’s legal guardian, that it would be good for Gabriel to meet him again on neutral ground. Like her mother, Adriana had several homes around the world, including a grand apartment in Rio de Janeiro. With some of the money that Evelyne left him in her will, Antonio bought a ticket to Miami and arranged to rent a car for the drive to Orlando. But at the last minute, the trip was canceled by Adriana with no explanation.

  It’s not clear what excuses were given to Gabriel about Antonio’s sudden absence from his life, but it appears that the effort to prevent him from seeing Antonio also had the cooperation of his maternal grandparents in Rio de Janeiro.

  Always tell Gabriel the truth, never half-truths.

  Antonio wondered about the “half-truths” that the little boy was hearing. Had he been told that his surrogate father had abandoned him? That he had also gone to heaven, like his parents and his older brother Raphael?

  Antonio never got the opportunity to ask him. The last time he saw the boy was the day after Evelyne died, which was also the day that Antonio claims Gabriel finally called him daddy.

  But despite Antonio and Evelyne’s concerns, Gabriel flourished under the care of his aunt and his paternal grandmother. He lived surrounded by a loving family in grand homes on three continents. Despite his mother’s fears, he never forgot his Brazilian roots and had a good relationship with his maternal grandparents in Rio. Perhaps Lily and Adriana refused to allow Gabriel to maintain a relationship with Antonio because they never trusted his motives. Perhaps they feared that he would try to somehow claim the little boy’s inheritance.

  Although Antonio claimed he was never after money, the Safras were not so sure. Everyone was after money, and they simply couldn’t risk opening themselves up to a potential problem, especially when it involved a vulnerable little boy.

  THE 1980S AND early 1990s were surely among the most difficult in the lives of Edmond and Lily. In addition to the deaths of Claudio, Raphael, and Evelyne, Edmond wrestled to recoup his financial losses and, perhaps most important for him, his reputation, which had taken a beating after the American Express smear campaign. Following his legal victories over the company, Edmond would no doubt have gladly retreated to his homes around the world and returned to work at his banks where he put in long hours, often dining on a simple meal of cottage cheese and fruit prepared by his personal chef. He would have gladly stayed away from the international party circuit. “I try to remain unknown as much as possible,” he had happily told a journalist. But Lily was having none of it. Now that she was part of the social firmament on two continents, she wasn’t going to slow down. In many ways, it was in the 1990s that the Safras were the most active socially and philanthropically.

  Months before Evelyne died, in April 1992, Edmond had been honored along with Turgut Ozal, the president of Turkey, at a gala dinner at New York’s Plaza hotel—a lavish event hosted by Edmond and Lily’s friends Ahmet and Mica Ertegun.

  The evening honored the arrival of Sephardic Jews in Turkey and the peaceful coexistence of Jews and Muslims in that country, with benefits going to the Quincentennial Foundation USA, a Turkish-American group that fosters understanding between Jews and Muslims. “It is very important that the world know that there have been 500 years of peaceful coexistence in Turkey between the Jews and Muslims,” said Ahmet Ertegun, who was a Muslim. “Over the last 500 years, the Sephardic Jewish community has contributed to art, culture and society.”

  Special guest Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, presented Edmond with a special humanitarian award for his “outstanding leadership in the international Jewish community.” Years later, he would find himself honoring Edmond in another way—as one of the speakers at his funeral.

  The gala dinner for more than five hundred invited guests included everyone from Henry and Nancy Kissinger to former UN secretary general Javier Pérez de Cuéllar and his wife, Marcela. Even Edmond’s brothers Joseph and Moise made the trip from São Paulo to see their brother honored for his philanthropy.

  But while Edmond was fêted, it was Lily who was the star of the evening—“the beauty of the night, ravishing in a white top and striped silk skirt by Givenchy, with her blond hair in a halo of tiny braids.” The photograph later appeared in Women’s Wear Daily, signaling that Lily had finally solidified her credentials in New York society.

  She was one of the Ladies Who Lunch, and the society press loved her and her exquisite taste in clothes, art, and interiors. A few months after the Turkish gala, at the summer society wedding in Cap Ferrat of Pamela Lawrence, the daughter of advertising legend Mary Wells Lawrence and airline executive Harding Lawrence, it was Lily who seemed to upstage the bride. She made a “big hit” at the wedding, according to columnist Aileen Mehle, who also attended. She wore “pinky red chiffon by Valentino and her silky blonde hair in a long braid woven with ribbons. What a way to go!”

  Not to be outdone by anyone, Lily now planned functions on a grand scale. In 1993, she organized a reception for Edmond at the Knesset, the Israeli legislature in Jerusalem. “Joseph Safra had just thrown a huge party for his son’s bar mitzvah in São Paulo, and Lily was determined to upstage him,” said one of Edmond’s business associates who did not want to be identified. “What better way to do this than to have a huge party at the Knesset?”

  The party was to honor the International Sephardic Education Foundation (ISEF), which Edmond and Lily had founded with Walter Weiner’s wife, Nina, in 1977. The organization gives out university scholarships to needy students in Israel. The planning for the reception was so complex that it required a vote on the floor of the Knesset before it could go forward. But despite her best efforts to impress, Lily was unable to pull it off. Just before the party was to take place, Edmond’s eldest brother, Elie, died in Switzerland, and the whole affair was immediately canceled as the Safra clan mobilized for the funeral.

  With her pretensions to grandeur, it must have bothered Lily that no matter how extravagant her parties or how elegant her clothes, she would always be considered an arriviste by the old money elite in Europe, and especially in New York. In his memoir, Chic Savages, John Fairchild, former publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, called the Safras the epitome of the Nouvelle Society, “part of the social history of the greedy eighties.”

  According to Fairchild, Nouvelles, a category in which he included the Safras, the Trumps, the Gettys, the Kravises, and the Taubmans, among others, were fond of “elaborate decorations and period furniture in gargantuan apartments, regal entertaining with flowers flown in from England, travel by private jet or on the Concorde, and couture clothes at prices high enough to build a small summer cottage.”

  As Edmond himself noted in an exchange with Fairchild, “When I give Lily a dollar, Lily spends two dollars,” he said. “That’s our one big problem in the world today. We are all spending money we don’t really have.” In Chic Savages, Fairchild describes dining in Rome with the Safras at an elegant dinner hosted by the designer Valentino in his extravagantly decorated palazzo on the Appian Way—itself a prime example of the decadent 1980s with its pool “grand enough for an Esther Williams production number” and its garden “straight out of Ben Hur.” Lily had just finished buying her wardrobe for the season from Valentino, and to
ld Fairchild that she was heading back to New York—“my favorite place,” she confided. “It is the capital of the world.” Or, as Fairchild puts it, “the capital of Nouvelle Society.”

  Fairchild recalled other Safra soirees in their many homes. “When Nouvelles eat, it’s a formal affair,” he recalled. “Petrus, one of the most expensive of the French Bordeaux, flows like water, and the caviar is heaped up. Banker Edmond Safra and his wife, Lily, served so much caviar at one of their dinners that a guest—who shall remain nameless—dispensed with the toast points altogether and called for a spoon, to go after double helpings of the ‘Iranian gold.’ At leave-taking, each guest was presented with an exquisite ivory picture frame.”

  At another party, Lily, ever generous with her friends, gave each of the women a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes, which typically retail for more than $500 a pair.

  Others recalled absurd conversations between Edmond and Lily.

  “Darling, I bought you an airplane today,” said Edmond, in a conversation overheard by one of their good friends in Rio. According to the friend, Lily then went on to question whether Edmond had made the right choice in his airplane purchase, enumerating the attributes of the latest model Gulfstream that had just come on the market.

  According to Fairchild, the old money families “disparage the Nouvelles behind their backs but never turn down one of their invitations”—especially when the party favors are so luxurious.

  But at times the experience of dining with the Safras could be unnerving, especially after Edmond decided that the family needed a small army of bodyguards to protect them. “The number of bodyguards probably outnumbers the guests,” quipped one Riviera resident when describing a flurry of “intimate” dinners—no more than forty guests at a time—that the couple hosted shortly after buying and renovating La Leopolda.