S Times: THE FULL FILTHY MONTE; The marriage of Albert of Monaco had all the fairytale trappings...
sufaud
fairytale trappings but behind Monte Carlo's glamour lurk rumours of a
reluctant bride, the prince's philandering past, murky money and
allegations of abuse of power.
Matthew Campbell explores the 'curse of the Grimaldis' 'Albert has
turned a blind eye to the antics of mobsters'
Matthew Campbell. Sunday Times. London (UK): Jul 3, 2011. pg. 1
They certainly looked the part, she in her long white dress by Armani
and he in a medalfestooned ceremonial jacket. The setting, too, was
straight out of a fairy tale, a rose-tinted palace on a cliff
overlooking the Mediterranean. Prince Albert of Monaco, 53, and
Princess Charlene, a South African 20 years his junior, were married
this weekend under the gaze of celebrity friends and European royals.
They dined afterwards on local delicacies prepared by one of the
world's most famous chefs and danced until late on a marble terrace as
fireworks lit the sky.
It would be nice to think that the bride and groom, who have known
each other for more than a decade and have been dating for the past
six years, will live happily ever after. But this is no fairy tale and
Monaco, for all its picturesque attributes, is no fairy land.
The story being played out in Britain's favourite tax haven has more
in common with some sinister thriller as, in an age of ever-increasing
transparency, the ramparts of secrecy around some of the world's
filthiest fortunes begin to crumble, exposing money laundering,
murders and organised crime.
When the shy, bespectacled Albert took over from his father, Prince
Rainier, at the head of the centuries-old Grimaldi clan in 2005, he
seemed to have the best of intentions. Courtiers almost choked on
their canapes when they heard him, in his inaugural address, promise
to clean up a city state that had been known for so long as a magnet
for money of dubious origins, including the Sicilian and Calabrian
mobs.
Since then, though, Albert, who rules by princely decree, has done
very little. He is written off by some critics as a callow party
animal and a pretend environmentalist who is more interested in grands
prix and sex than in running his country. To the sadness of its
subjects, Somerset Maugham's verdict about Monaco as a "sunny place
for shady people" has never seemed more accurate. What has gone wrong?
A former member of the Monaco Olympic bobsleigh team, Albert had hoped
that his marriage to Charlene Wittstock, a former swimming champion,
would help to resurrect the Monaco brand, evoking the happy epoch that
followed when Rainier wed Grace Kelly, the actress, in 1956. That
felicitous union of Hollywood celebrity and European royalty helped to
turn Monaco from a mere gambling den into a prosperous centre of
global finance. It was the miracle of the Mediterranean.
The miracle today is that Albert's wedding ever took place. Even if
the latest rumour about a three-month-old "love child" with a Moroccan
waitress from Nice turns out to have been fantasy -- another version
has it that the mother is German and the child a toddler -- the
worrying thing for Monaco is that nobody would be surprised if it were
true.
Albert had previously denied paternity of Jazmin Grace Grimaldi, a 19-
year-old Californian, before acknowledging, under threat of being
exposed on American television as a "deadbeat dad", that he is,
indeed, her father: he had enjoyed a fling with her mother when she
visited Monaco on holiday.
He had also denied being the father of Alexandre, the seven-year-old
son he had with Nicole Coste, a Togolese air hostess, before being
pressured into telling the truth after she appeared in the pages of
Paris Match. Neither of these offspring was invited to the wedding,
although Coste was seen wandering the streets of the principality on
the eve of the civil ceremony that took place on Friday.
WITTSTOCK, a statuesque, blue-eyed blonde who was born in Zimbabwe and
who inevitably draws comparisons with Princess Grace, has put a brave
face on the chatter. However, no amount of public appearances by her
at the Pounds 45m wedding events have been able to kill reports that
she had tried to flee the principality after discovering the existence
of Albert's third illegitimate child.
She was said to have moved out of the palace about 10 days before the
wedding to take up residence in one of the principality's swankier
hotels. Was this a bid for freedom or a modern bride moving out to
prepare for the wedding? Her father claimed that she had been shopping
in Paris on the day she "ran away"; but few among the smattering of
world leaders, B-list celebrities and European royals in the audience
would have been surprised if Charlene, instead of saying "I will" at
the altar, had screamed: "Give me back my passport."
According to one account, police confiscated it at Nice airport to
prevent her leaving the country and to allow Albert to convince her to
return home.
Was she a willing participant in her wedding or had the palace paid
her to go through with it, as some suggested? Under that scenario, the
marriage will be quietly annulled after a seemly interval, leaving
Albert without a wife and heirless. It would not be the first marital
disaster in his star-crossed family's history.
Most modern Grimaldi marriages have ended badly -- and sometimes
tragically. After Grace was killed in a car crash in 1982, an
inconsolable Rainier never remarried. Albert's two sisters, the
Princesses Caroline and Stephanie, have married several times between
them without any luck: Stefano Casiraghi, Caroline's second husband,
died in a powerboat accident. Stephanie has gone from wild child to
welfare mum and is remembered for sharing a caravan for two years with
a circus elephant trainer.
Has the "curse of the Grimaldis" struck yet again?
Monaco is founded on an eye-catching piece of treachery. When a
Genovese buccaneer called Francois the Spiteful knocked at the palace
gates in 1297, sympathetic guards made the mistake of letting him in
and he skewered them with his sword. Lurking in the bushes, other
warriors rushed in. Except for brief periods, the Grimaldis have held
the rock ever since.
In the 19th century they tried to negotiate a deal to lease their
deepwater port to the Russians for 100 years but were pressured by
France and Italy into devising some other money-making scheme. They
hit upon gambling. Suddenly, Monte Carlo was on the map.
This money magnet was not to everyone's taste: Queen Victoria is said
to have closed her curtains as she passed through the principality in
her horsedrawn carriage. But that did not stop the wealthy of Britain,
Europe and America from frittering away their fortunes in the casino.
When the lack of income tax began to attract Europe's rich as
residents, the principality hit more gold.
As Monaco flourished, its ruling family amassed a fortune (today they
are reputedly richer than the Windsors) but the Grimaldis were a
rackety crew. Rainier inherited the title in 1949 through his mother,
the illegitimate child of Prince Louis II and a cabaret singer. Monaco
has a lot to thank Grace for. While Rainier busied himself with his
collection of vintage cars, the actressturned-princess won the hearts
and minds of her subjects by applying her considerable style and taste
to almost everything in the principality, from the palace curtains to
what was being built on the coast.
Her children, though, became a tabloid legend: Stephanie by bedding a
procession of circus performers and palace servants and Albert by
conducting endless auditions for the role of princess. The "bachelor
prince" was the target of rumours about his sexuality as a young man
because of the apparent absence of girlfriends.
But he made up for lost time and had dated some of the world's most
attractive women, from Brooke Shields, the actress, to Naomi Campbell,
the model, by the time he glimpsed Charlene and her impressive
shoulders in a swimsuit at a competition in Monaco in 2000.
"It was incredibly flattering," she told Vogue magazine. "After seeing
me swim, Albert asked my management for permission to take me out. We
spent the whole evening laughing and talking."
They have been seeing each other regularly since 2005, when Albert
became Monaco's ruler; but life has not been easy for Charlene, who
does not speak French and has found it difficult to break into
Monaco's extremely snobbish society. Behind her back they call her
"Princess Barbie".
Albert rules over a corner of the Riviera where every square inch
seems to have been built on with the exception of the "jardins
exotiques" and a bit of greenery in the central square. Not content
with building up, his father also tunnelled underground and even built
at sea in a cunning "land reclamation" programme that boosted the
principality's square footage.
Albert prefers the big, empty spaces. He followed an ancestor's
footsteps to the North Pole and once admitted in an interview with The
Sunday Times that he was happiest while travelling incognito around
America. He has struggled with the burdens of state since proclaiming
at the start of his rule that "money and virtue should be combined".
Since then Monaco has nominally been more co-operative in revealing
who uses it as a tax haven; but this, according to experts, is only
windowdressing.
"A study of the facts totally contradicts the version of the Monaco
authorities who are trying to make us believe that a younger
prince ... may have changed anything," says Vincent Piolet, a French
expert on money laundering. "Behind the fairy tale is the hell of
financial criminality."
HOW bad is it? Robert Eringer, a former FBI agent who was hired by the
prince as an intelligence adviser to help him root out corruption,
recalled that after an initial interest the prince "seemed to prefer
gokarting and gallivanting".
Eringer, who is suing Albert in California over an unpaid invoice of
Pounds 35,000, has produced evidence in court of Albert's turning a
blind eye to the antics of corrupt advisers while giving money
launderers and mobsters a free rein.
One Russian trying to worm his way into Albert's good graces was
suspected of several murders in his homeland.
Another "well-connected" Russian, whose company operates from Monaco,
may have been poisoned in Nice, according to sources familiar with the
case.
Eringer has published Monaco police files on some of these Russians.
The phrase "links to organised crime" keeps cropping up in the
documents. Why does Monaco allow them to operate from its territory?
It is widely rumoured that some of Albert's advisers and "friends"
threaten to disclose embarrassing secrets about his love life to make
sure they get their way. For a financial consideration, officials have
been known to help foreigners gain access to the prince's circle and
clear the hurdles involved in obtaining Monaco residency, which, like
everything else, requires the prince's signature.
The British are understood to be the third most numerous foreign
residents of Monaco, after the French and Italians. If the applicant
can show a few hundred million in cash or other assets, banks will
also help with the complicated citizenship procedures. Mark Thatcher
was rejected as "undesirable".
Perhaps he did not talk to the right people.
Albert did not hesitate to promote Philippe Narmino, a former
magistrate, to chief of the justice department despite a police report
investigating links with dubious dealings. Narmino had been in charge
of the Monaco Red Cross when a EUR 1m painting by Miro, the Spanish
artist, that had been donated to the organisation "disappeared" only
to turn up later for sale in an art gallery.
Narmino has denied any wrongdoing. On Friday, in his role as head of
the council of state, he officiated over Albert's civil wedding
ceremony.
Albert also appointed an official who, according to an investigation
by Eringer, had taken a Pounds 2.7m bribe from a Lebanese
entrepreneur, falsely claiming that it was for the prince. The
Lebanese businessman was heard boasting: "I've got Albert by the
balls."
On occasion Albert has shown questionable judgment. In 2008, a team of
builders from Moscow put up a threebedroom "dacha", or country house,
in his garden. In the same year President Vladimir Putin warmly
thanked Albert, a member of the International Olympics Committee, for
supporting Russia's bid to host the Winter Games in the Black Sea port
of Sochi in 2014.
In 2007 the two had spent a week together, fishing and hunting in
Siberia, where the Russian leader was photographed posing without his
shirt. Albert was given two freshwater seal pups from Lake Baikal.
One Russian said to have been given red carpet treatment in Monaco is
Sergei Pugachev, a friend of Putin who has been described as "the
Kremlin cashier". He was Albert's guest of honour at a recent charity
ball before being accused in Moscow of committing fraud.
An older generation of Monegasques frowns on the Russian invasion:
some advertisements in estate agents' windows are in Russian and so
are the numberplates on the Ferraris. "The girls are very beautiful,
of course," says one Monaco native. "But a lot of them are
prostitutes."
Organised crime is not the only dark side of the story. Sinister
abuses are perpetrated by the government, too, and with impunity. As
the wedding celebrations got under way yesterday, Geza Honti, a 78-
year- old retired German eye doctor, sat on a bench overlooking the
bay.
He came to Monaco years ago to live in his mother's apartment.
Like so many other foreigners -- including Britons such as Sir Roger
Moore, the actor, and Sir Philip Green, the businessman -- he was
attracted by the zero tax rate. On top of that the weather was good
and, with a policeman on every street corner, crime was almost
nonexistent.
What happened to Honti in 2006 is reminiscent of the worst excesses of
the Soviet Union. A bailiff and several other officials arrived on his
doorstep demanding that he vacate his flat so the authorities could
conduct an inventory of his possessions.
When he questioned the order, apparently the result of a complaint
about a cluttered balcony, he claims he was injected with a sedative
and held against his will on a psychiatric wing of the Princess Grace
hospital. He was allowed home later to find that his flat had been
emptied.
"I had about five kilos of gold coins, there were paintings, a lot of
carpets but, you know, the most precious thing they took were my
photographs and documents and books. It's incredible. Apparently I'll
never get them back," he said.
According to Patrick Anhoury, an estate agent and friend, Honti had
committed no offence beyond occasionally berating acquaintances about
the evils of smoking and eating too much garlic.
Eccentric behaviour is no crime and, in Anhoury's view, Honti is the
victim of a criminal judicial system. "In Monaco," Anhoury said,
"there are these lists circulating of elderly well-off people who are
alone and vulnerable and who can be stripped of their assets by
abusive procedures."
Anhoury was speaking on the telephone from Lebanon. He had fled there
after being informed that he was in danger of arrest for writing an
"insulting" letter to Narmino in which he accused the minister of
abuse of power for authorising Honti's hospitalisation. Apparently the
case is not isolated. Monica Fristedt, a Swedish resident, complained
that jewels and other valuables had been stolen from her flat by an
intruder working in cahoots with government officials in 2004. She has
been waging a legal battle to get them back.
The justice ministry declined to answer questions about these cases
last week. Narmino continues to deny any wrongdoing.
But the question of whether elderly rich people can live safely in
their penthouse apartments is as important to Monaco's future as its
promise not to tax them.
All of which raises the question of why the French put up with this
irritating pimple -- at 0.79 square miles, it is the second smallest
independent state in the world after the Vatican City -- on their
coastline.
In 2000 two French parliamentarians claimed that Monaco had lax
policies on money laundering and had been putting political pressure
on the judiciary so that alleged crimes were not being properly
investigated.
The important point, however, is that the French exchequer does not
suffer: French citizens who took up residency in Monaco after 1957
have to pay French taxes -- and the pre-1957 residents are dying off.
So Paris turns a blind eye to what goes on so long as its own
interests are protected.
President Nicolas Sarkozy was among the wedding guests yesterday,
although without Carla, his wife, once a close friend of Albert. She
prefers to avoid air travel these days as she is expecting a baby.
Charlene has said she and Albert are planning to start a family. But
that was before the stories began circulating about her attempted
flight home to South Africa.
If Albert fails to produce an heir it will be left to Caroline's
children, Pierre and Charlotte, to succeed him. The glossy magazines
and paparazzi follow these two everywhere in the hope of detecting the
whiff of scandal. Yet they are much better behaved and more sensible
than the older generation -- particularly their troubled aunt
Stephanie.
So regardless of what happens to Albert and the swimmer, the Grimaldis
might have a future.
''The girls are beautiful. But a lot of them are prostitutes
Credit: Matthew Campbell
[Illustration]
Caption: Charlene Wittstock, right, at a charity gala in Monaco and
with Albert after their civil wedding ceremony on Friday; FRANCOIS
DURAND/VALERY HACHE; Albert's sisters Stephanie and Caroline at the
wedding, top. Charlene's parents Mike and Lynette, above left, after
the civil ceremony and Albert's parents Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly
at their own wedding