Edmond Safra

Edmond Safra   ( Financier,  Businessman,  billionaire,  banker)
Born	6 August 1932  Beirut,  Lebanon
Died	3 December 1999 (Age 67)  Monaco
Cause of death	fire
Victim of	premature death
Nationality	•  Lebanese •  Brazilian
Religion	Jewish
Spouse	Lily Watkins
Founder of	Hermitage Capital Management
Member of	Jeffrey Epstein/Black book, The 1001 Club
Interests	Iran Contra
Interest of	Martin Armstrong, Empress Bianca
Banker who involved in drug, gold and currency trafficking, money laundering and organised crime, including what became known as Iran Contra. Died in suspicious fire.

Edmond J. Safra was a Lebanese-Brazilian banker who involved in drug, gold and currency trafficking, money laundering and organised crime, including what became known as Iran Contra. He was married to Lily Watkins from 1976 until his death in suspicious fire.

Background

Edmond J. Safra was born in Beirut, into a Jewish family whose banking business began during the Ottoman Empire a century earlier. The Safra family was engaged in the financing of trade between Aleppo, Constantinople and Alexandria. The patriarch of the contemporary Safra dynasty, Jacob E. Safra established his own bank in Beirut in 1920, the Jacob Safra Maison de Banque.

His son, Edmond J. Safra, founded a bank in Switzerland before arriving in New York in the early 1960s to establish what became Republic National Bank. Within twenty years, Republic grew to be one of America’s largest banks. In 1989 alone, Safra donated $1 million to the ADL.

Career

As far back as 1957, Edmond Safra was named as a drug trafficker in a US Bureau of Narcotics report. Until his death Safra was linked to drug, gold and currency trafficking, money laundering and organised crime. Among the allegations was that he was involved in the Iran-Contra affair; that he arranged the murder of a security specialist who had discovered a link between him and the arms-for-hostages deal; that he had double-crossed the Medellin cocaine cartel; that he was a confrère of mafia legend Meyer Lansky; and that Republic had laundered the drug-trafficking profits of Panama's General Noriega.

On Jan. 3, 1989, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials in Bern, Switzerland identified Safra and his New York Republic National Bank as a major element in the "Lebanese-Bulgarian connection" which flooded Europe with heroin and hashish. Drug proceeds from the Middle East trade were traced by the DEA to a numbered account at Republic National Bank registered in the name Shakarchi Trading Company, a Swiss firm owned by long-time business associates of Safra. Simultaneously, other DEA agents working on "Operation Polar Cap" traced millions of dollars in Medellin Cartel cocaine profits to the same bank account.

Death

In December 1999, Safra and his nurse were suffocated by fumes in a fire deliberately lit at the billionaire's Monaco home, where he apparently felt so safe that he did not have his Mossad trained bodyguards stay the night. Other accounts hold that it was his wife, Lily Safra, who had moved these security guards to the family estate in France - videotape from key security cameras was also said to have gone missing.

His death made Bill Browder majority shareholder of Hermitage Capital Management. Dominick Dunne, who investigated the case, was told that two bullets were found in his body. The Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation continues to support educational, religious, medical, cultural, and humanitarian causes and organizations.

Another bodyguard and nurse, American Ted Maher, who was sharing the night shift with Torrente at the time, was arrested under suspicion of starting the fire, and was convicted of the crime in 2002 by the Monaco Court. He claims that he was attacked by two masked men and, unable to figure out how to trigger the Safra's complex security system, started the fire in an attempt to trigger the system. The prosecution argued he was attempting to carry out a daring rescue, and thus increase his standing in the Safra family's eyes, but lost control of the fire unintentionally.

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