Assassination of millionaire banker leaves police baffled

Independent
By John Lichfield in Paris
04 March 2005


The few sketchy details to have emerged on the death this week of the French banker Edouard Stern read like the first chapter of a thriller.

Rich and handsome, the only son of a celebrated Jewish banking family, M. Stern, 50, was a man whose eventful career had made him many enemies.

Swiss authorities confirmed yesterday that the millionaire was shot dead in his bedroom in his fifth-storey penthouse apartment in a wealthy area near the old town of Geneva. No trace was found of a struggle or break-in. Authorities were treating the death as murder, or possibly an assassinat - a premeditated killing.

At first the Geneva public prosecutor's office refused to confirm that the dead man found in the flat was M. Stern, one of the most respected, and loathed, financiers in the world.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=616676

Mystery surrounds murder of banker found tied up in flat


THE murder of the renowned French banker Edouard Stern, who was tied up and shot in his Geneva penthouse, was the subject of frenzied speculation yesterday.

The former heir apparent of the investment bank Lazard was a ruthless businessman who made many enemies.

He died on Monday evening in his fifth-floor flat, which is equipped with video surveillance and has a police station on the ground floor. The body was discovered on Tuesday afternoon.

...

According to the French newspaper Liberation, some investigators suspect the death may be linked to sado-masochistic activity. Another theory put forward in the French media involves extortion by the Russian mafia.
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=237662005

linked to collapse of Vivendi Group:
" Stern also quarrelled with a then Lazard executive, Jean-Marie Messier, who was later to build Vivendi Universal into an international media giant before crashing to earth in 2002.".....

Independent story goes on to say:

After a business career punctuated by many arguments, coups and changes of direction, M. Stern had recently created an investment fund and consultancy of his own. Among his recent coups was the negotiation of the sale of the French bank CCF to the British banking giant HSBC. He was also chairman and a leading shareholder of the British engineering company Delta plc.

M. Stern, an expert in off-shore tax avoidance, was also said to have a network of more submerged investments in places such as Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands.

He was rumoured in Geneva to have recently lost a lot of money through unwise investments in eastern Europe or Russia. He was said to be furious at his losses - but also to feel under threat.

The banker - a black belt at karate, a collector of weapons, and an expert in gambling card games - is also said to have had a "complicated" private life.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=616676

No stranger to controversy, the 50-year-old Stern made headlines when, as a member of the board of French pharmaceutical firm Rhodia, he led a bid to oust chief executive Jean-Pierre Tirouflet. He failed and left the board.

At Lazard, Mr Stern was for years both heir apparent and son-in-law to Lazard chief Michel David-Weill, one of France's richest men.

The reputedly irascible Mr Stern quit the bank in 1997 after bitter internal feuding, leaving Mr David-Weill without an obvious successor and creating a power vacuum that persists today.

..............

He had business dealings with renowned US banker Jeffrey Keil, former president of US-based private bank Republic when it was owned by the late financier Edmund Safra.

Mr Safra was killed in 1999 in a bizarre fire in his Monaco apartment, which his male nurse, a former US marine, said he had staged so he could try to rescue his ailing employer.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12439017-23109,00.html

At the age of 19, Lily Watkins married an Argentinean hosiery magnate, Mario Cohen, and bore him three children before they divorced in the early 1960s. In 1965 she wed Freddy Monteverde, the head of a Brazilian electrical distribution business. But as he struggled under the pressure of the job he killed himself in his mansion in Rio leaving his wife a personal fortune of £200 million.
http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=1288142002

BBC documentary in 2003 said that Monteverde's suicide was unusal because "he shot himself TWICE in the head"......

Conspiracy theories about Lily Safra:
The "Gilded Lily" as she is often referred to also target of conspiracy theories that has suggested, inter alia that she is a former CIA double agent/KGB plant and has a daughter by another KGB plant - the Duke of Edinburgh - and that their daughter is yet another KGB plant who calls herself "Camilla Parker Bowles"...

Further conspiracy theories suggest that RomanAbramovich
mysterious Russian oligarch, owner of Sibneft and embroiled in Yukos bankruptcy fiasco, is also part of this KGB cold war plant biz and may be involved in the Russian mafia circle that is being linked to Stern's murder.

The allegations about him that are doing the rounds of the Foreign Correspondents Club in London are that he is the son of "Prince Charles" - aka as Michael Gelli - and the late Australian-born socialite Lady "Kanga" Tryon:

High-flying French financier Edouard Stern, murdered this week in Geneva, was found shot three times on his bedroom floor dressed in a latex rubber suit, Swiss newspapers reported on Friday.

"Colleagues discovered his body clothed completely in latex rubber," said Geneva daily Le Temps, without citing a source for the information.

"The French banker took three bullets, two of them in the head," said daily La Tribune de Geneve.

Investigating judge Michel Graber said late on Thursday there was no doubt that Stern had been murdered. His death has shaken the French-speaking financial world.


http://tvnz.co.nz/view/news_world_story_skin/477618?format=html

hard to fight back when you are-- ahem -- tied up an latexed.

let the media frenzy begin!

Was this guy, and/or Edmund Safra, doing business with Tafiq Nada and the Brotherhood?

Explain, please.

Buccaneer banker shot dead in his Swiss home
From Charles Bremner in Paris and Caroline Merrell

Snip:
Separated from Beatrice David-Weill, M Stern was living alone in Geneva, although he often visited his wife and three children in New York, where they live. “Some observers are talking about the possible implication of circles linked to the Russian mafia,” Le Monde reported. “Tough in business, hating to lose money, he is said to have been locked in a quarrel which could have become nasty .” The French media also suggested links with business that he was said to be conducting in tax havens including Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands.

The French media also suggested that M Stern’s private life might have caught up with him. “He was said to have a private life as tumultuous as his professional one,” le Parisien wrote.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-1510106,00.html

Money doesn't buy everything. Or does it?

Stern's death sparks a murder probe
Ross Tieman, Evening Standard,
4 March 2005

Snip:
Stern, 50, the one-time heir apparent to Michel David-Weill as chairman of investment bank Lazards, was a director of London-quoted engineering group Delta and of Franco-Spanish tobacco giant Altadis. He also ran investment funds said to be worth more than $600m (£314m).


Shares in Delta rose more than 4% as investors speculated that the death of its chairman, who had a 26% stake worth £41.7m, might leave it vulnerable to a bid. The company said it was still awaiting official confirmation of his death.

Staff at Altadis, where Stern had been a director for several years, declined to comment. Nor was there any comment from Eurazéo, a Paris-based private equity group chaired by David-Weill, which has a partnership with investment group IRR Capital, a Cayman Islands-registered company of which Stern was chief executive and vice chairman.
....

His venture with Eurazéo also disappointed. It and Eastern Promise, a company owned by Stern, each invested €264m (£181m) in IRR Capital, which combined stakes in quoted companies with private equity investments, in April 1997. IRR was controlled by Stern. In 2003, Eurazéo valued its stake at €190m after a writedown of €74m.
http://www.thisislondon.com/news/business/articles/timid398587?source=

Stern Gang
Encyclopædia Britannica Article

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also called Stern Group , or Lehi , formally Lohame Herut Yisra'el (Hebrew: “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”) Zionist terrorist organization in Palestine, founded in 1940 by Avraham Stern (1907–42) after a split in the right-wing underground movement, Irgun Zvai Leumi.

Fanatically anti-British, the group repeatedly attacked British personnel in Palestine and even invited aid from the Axis powers. The British police retaliated by killing Stern in his apartment in February 1942

Jon Henley
Friday March 4, 2005
The Guardian

Snip:
Tribune de Genève said Stern, widely seen as a brilliant and charming man but insufferably arrogant, had been developing his personal interests in Russia and eastern Europe, notably through a string of property investments.

Swiss sources said police were working on the theory that his murder could be related to those activities.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1430036,00.html