Villa Leopolda et meurtre dans un penthouse à Monaco

Built over a century ago, Villa La Leopolda stands on a 50-acre estate in Villefranche-sur-Mer, on some of the most expensive land on the French Riviera. Described as the third-largest home in the world, the sprawling property has 19 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, multiple swimming pools, a bowling alley, a movie theater and an twenty-acre orchard of olive and fruit trees that require a team of 50 full-time gardeners just to care for it. The villa is not only known to have the best sea views in the south of France, but it also sits on 10 acres of immaculate grounds.

The villa was purchased by King Leopold II of Belgium in 1902, and he used it with his teenage prostitute mistress. Leopold lavished upon her large sums of money, estates, gifts, and a noble title, baronne de Vaughan (Baroness Vaughan), as well as gifting her Villa Leopolda in 1902. Here’s their sordid story.

During WWI, La Leopolda served as a military hospital. In the 1930s, the villa was significantly expanded by the new owner – American millionaire Ogden Codman, and is still the largest in the area. In 1955, Alfred Hitchcock filmed his ironic detective Catch a Thief, avec Cary Grant et Grace Kelly à la villa.

À la mort de Codman en 1951, le domaine fut vendu à Izaak Walton Killam dont l'épouse hérita du lieu après sa mort. À la fin des années 1950, elle le vendit au président de Fiat Gianni Agnelli (1921-2003) et à Marella Agnelli. Les Agnelli vendirent la Villa Leopolda à la philanthrope canadienne Dorothy J. Killam en 1963. Killam vécut dans la villa jusqu'à sa mort en 1965.

In the 1980s the property passed from the hands of Fiat and Ferrari’s CEO, into the hands of a wealthy Lebanese-Monegasque banker Edmond Safra and his Brazilian wife Lily SafraIls vivaient à Monaco et utilisaient la propriété pour organiser des fêtes incroyablement somptueuses.

The publisher John Fairchild later wrote about one of the Safra’s lavish parties in his book Sauvages chics and described the occasion as “the ultimate in conspicuous consumption.” At one of their parties, female guests were reportedly given ornate enameled boxes featuring a portrait of the villa. The president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, Frank Sinatra, Prince Charles, and Prince Rainier III visited the Safra’s at the villa.

Lily and Edmond Safra’s story is one that’s almost too crazy to believe. In 1969, Lily’s second husband, the wealthy Brazilian entrepreneur Alfredo Monteverde, died from two gunshots to the chest, after returning from a lunch with Lily, where they had discussed divorce proceedings. Investigators at the time recovered only one bullet and found no gunpowder on his hands at the scene. Detectives quickly “lost” the two main pieces of evidence (the gun and the single bullet), and ruled it a “suicide”, which Lily did not dispute.

Much to the frustration of his children, who maintain that their father was murdered and that the will was forged, Lily kept his entire fortune, tous ses biens et son entreprise (qu'elle a vendue pour plus de 350 millions de dollars), avec l'aide d'Edmond Safra, qui était le banquier de son défunt mari (et désormais son) mari. C'est ainsi qu'elle et Edmond se sont rencontrés.

Les frères de Safra (qui étaient aussi ses partenaires commerciaux) ne voulaient pas qu'il l'épouse. Non seulement elle n'était plus en âge d'avoir des enfants, mais elle était également soupçonnée d'être responsable de la mort de son mari. Edmond écouta ses frères et mit fin à leur relation, retournant à New York.

Edmond was Lily’s fourth husband (all very wealthy) and the second time she was widowed.

However, something clicked in Edmond and he and Lily were back together by the winter of 1972. Most attribute the change of heart to his discovery of Lily’s third marriage to Moroccan businessman Samuel H. Bendahan, which transpired not long after their initial breakup. Although the marriage only lasted two months, it was enough to catch Edmond’s eye and the two were formally married in 1976. Their pre-nuptial agreement was 600-pages long.

Edmond Safra was murdered in a fire (with mysterious circumstances — the full truth of which is still unknown) in their two-story waterfront Monte Carlo penthouse in 1999, and Lily Safra (who escaped through a window and whose net worth is now estimated at $1.2 billion) still owns the villa. Rumors still circulate about who killed her husband, with some suspecting Lily, and others suspecting the Russia mafia (stemming from the rumors that American Express spread, which you can read about in this book).

Peu avant sa mort, il a gagné des milliards en vendant sa Trade Development Bank et la Republic National Bank de New York à HSBC. C'était le quatrième mariage de Lily et elle a hérité de plus de 4 milliards d'euros à la mort d'Edmond.

You can read the whole story in this biography. The biography of Lily Safra, which was written by a professional investigative journalist over the course of 5 years researching in Brazil, was blocked from being sold in Brasil.

Russian billionaire oligarch Mikhail Prokhorova fait plusieurs tentatives pour acheter la Villa Leopolda à Lily Safra avant d'accepter finalement son offre de 370 millions d'euros (plus 19,5 millions d'euros pour le mobilier de la villa) à l'été 2008.

Prokhorov attempted to withdraw from the sale in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, which led to a lawsuit between Prokhorov and Safra over the €39 million deposit that he had paid on the villa. A French court ruled against Prokhorov in November 2012 with Safra subsequently announcing that she would donate his deposit to various global charities.

Prokhorov would later deny that he had bought the property, with his spokesperson saying that he had refused to do business in France after his 2007 detention by French police for allegedly providing prostitutes for guests at Courchevel, the ski resort in the French Alps.

Most recently, Lily still had Monaco residency but reportedly spent most of her time in London. According to her biography, she was not in contact with any of her four children. The billionaire died alone, in 2022, at age 87.

Vouloir plus? Voici un liste des villas célèbres, les célébrités qui les possédaient et les choses folles qui s'y sont passées.