January 21, 2025 • 50 mins
To those who believe his story, Paul is the crown prince of Romania, a direct descendant of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Tsar Alexander II of Russia. To those who don’t, he’s Paul Lambrino: a fantasist claiming heirship to a non-existent throne. This is the story of Paul’s fight to win a $1bn inheritance. It features private spy agencies, missing Caravaggios, and a billionaire with an eye for a deal.
This piece, written by the FT’s Miles Johnson, is the first in our series, ‘The Great Escape’, featuring our most carefully crafted and deeply engrossing tales. It was originally printed in FT Weekend.
To read more stories like this and to save 40% on a standard digital subscription to the Financial Times, go to: ft.com/princeoffer.
Contributors: Miles Johnson, Mischa Frankl-Duval, Breen Turner, Laura Clarke, Cheryl Brumley, Matt Vella
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin Hi Hot Money listeners, it's Miles Johnson here, host
of season two The New Narcos. I'm here to tell
you to keep an eye on your Hot Money feed.
My colleagues are currently cooking up a third season of
the podcast, so watch this space. In the meantime, I
recently wrote a long read for the FT's weekend magazine,
(00:38):
which we thought you might like to listen to. It's
a story about a prince, a contested royal fortune, and
the deal he struck with a notorious billionaire to get
hold of his inheritance. It features international corruption, missing Caravaggio's
espionage operations, daring cross border escapes, and even a cameo
from JR.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
From Dallas.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It's called the Fugitive Prints. And just for our Hot
Money listeners, here's the audio version of that article. And
if you want to enjoy more articles like this one,
for a limited time only, you can save forty percent
on an annual Digital Financial Time subscription. Go to fd
dot com forward slash Prince offer to sign up.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Part one Inheritance.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
In September nineteen forty, King Carol Second's armoured train hurtled
towards Romania's western border a board with his paramour, a
small group of quarters as three poodles, and thirty truckloads
of the royal fortune. For years, the Romanian monarch had
held out against pressure from Hitler, but now his reign
(01:49):
was over. The only question was whether he would escape alive.
At Timasaura, several miles down the line, a Fascist death.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Squad would be waiting with machine guns.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Not stopping, the train ran the risk of being derailed
by dynamite. Stopping probably meant being executed. Before the war,
Carol had been famous for loving women, hunting, and fast cars,
and for spending lavishly.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
On all three. He'd been a playboy and a wild card.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Now he gave the train operator one command, full speed ahead.
As the train flew through Timosaura station, gunfire shattered the
carriage windows. The king and his passengers threw themselves to
the floor, ducking for their lives, until moments later the
noise faded into the distance. Eventually they reached the border.
(02:49):
Carol lived the rest of his life in exile, spending
his last years in a villa in Portugal, much like
other fallen European kings such as Umberto thecond of Italy
and an array of counts and countesses displaced by the war. Carol,
who died in nineteen fifty three, didn't live long enough
to see the rise of Nikolai Chiocescu's communist dictator. After
(03:10):
the end of Romania's monarchy, the new regime seized the
immense wealth Carol had left behind, worth the equivalent of
billions of euros today. Among other treasures, this included extravagant palaces,
vast tracts of land, and vaults of gold. Many of
the prize possessions Carol managed to flee with, including one
(03:30):
of the largest rare stamp collections in the world, were
sold off in exile, but some treasures, including forty old
master paintings by Caravaggio, Grembrand, Breugel and el Greco, seemingly vanished.
It was a loss that anybody would mourn, but for
one man, there was a part of King Carol the
Second's inheritance more valuable than anything his name. That was
(03:55):
something he'd spent his entire adult life trying to reclaim.
In a final desperate attempt to get it, he would
strike an audacious deal with a crew of international businessmen
and convicted criminals that ultimately led to exile and infamy.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
His given name is Paul. To his friends, he's Prince Paul. Today.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
He's in his seventies and a flash of gray runs
through his slick back hair, but his bushy eyebrows and
pouty lips retains some boyishness. He favors the uniform of
European playboys, tailored sports jackets and luxury loafers. He speaks
in the clipped, French accented manner of someone who attended
a continental finishing school. Depending on who you believe, his
(04:43):
true name is Prince Paul Philippe al Romanee, Crown Prince
of Romania, grandson of King Carol the Second and a
direct descendant of Queen Victoria of England and Czar Alexander
the Second of Russia. To his enemies, he's simply Paul Lambrino,
a fantasist who, even after everything that happened, claims airship
(05:06):
to a non existent throne. Paul, who was born in
France in nineteen forty eight, grew up with his father's stories.
He was told about Romania's fairy tale palaces, lustrous countryside
and peasant folk songs. It sounded like a distant fantasy,
but it was also a place of sorrow. It was
(05:27):
the site of an injustice that cast a shadow over
his entire life. Romania, his father explained, wasn't just their
lost country, it was their stolen kingdom, and Paul was
a prince. Paul's lineage stemmed from a royal controversy dating
back more than a century. When Carol was still a
(05:49):
hard partying heir to the throne, he eloped with a
beautiful young socialite named Zizi Lambrino. Carol's father was furious,
and he ordered the union annulled. The young Carol was
temporarily banished to a monastery and forbidden from ever seeing
her again, but Lambrino was pregnant with a son Paul's father.
(06:11):
On his Romanian birth certificate, the space for the father's
name should have read King Carol Second, but it was blank.
The surname was listed as Lambrino, legally recording his illegitimacy.
As a teen, Paul was packed off to Britain, where
he attended Millfield Boarding School in Somerset, before deciding to
(06:33):
skip university to make his way in nineteen sixties London.
He worked variously as a fashion photographer and an art dealer,
living in a flat off the King's Road in Chelsea.
In his late twenties, Paul began to have vivid dreams
about his grandfather after the Lambrino affair. Carol had been
briefly married to a Greek princess with whom he'd had
(06:55):
another son, Michael. This legitimate heir had never acknowledged Paul
or his father, so in the late nineteen seventies, Paul
traveled to Portugal to seek out the woman who'd been
Carol's wife at the end of his life life she
was still living in the villa, but when Paul got
there he found she was gravely ill.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
On her deathbed, she left him Carol's.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Gold signet ring, embossed with the symbol of the Romanian
monarchy surrounded by a crown of thorns. Paul began wearing
it religiously. Then one evening in the early nineteen nineties,
Paul met his own princess. He was at a black
tie charity ball in London when he spotted her, an
(07:41):
elegant woman in a long Valentino gown with dark hair
and a regal bearing. Her name was Leah Triff, She
was an American divorcee in her early forties who dressed
like Elizabeth Taylor and talked like Joan Rivers. She was
at the party playing hooky from her postgraduate studies at
Oxford Paul until then a resolute bachelor was instantly taken.
(08:06):
They had plenty in common. Leah was of Romanian Herite two.
They were both shameless name droppers, referencing famous acquaintances from
the Dalai Lama to the Sultan of Brunei, and both
had made regrettable mistakes in their youth, but it may
have been their differences that truly bonded them. Leah was
born in the late nineteen forties and grew up in Dearborn, Michigan.
(08:29):
In her early twenties, she married the famously pugnacious San
Francisco celebrity attorney Melvin Belli, who represented Jajar Gabour and
the Rolling Stones. He was forty two years her senior.
Leah became a well known San Francisco socialite, attending art
openings in white cocked hats and mustard suede suits, and
(08:50):
throwing parties in the eighteenth floor suite of the Intercontinental.
Mark Hopkins hotel for guests such as Joe DiMaggio and
Rudolph Nuriev. In nineteen eighty four, she unsuccessfully ran as
a Democrat for the California State Senate and was later
fined for making disguise campaign contributions to herself. That didn't
stop her from working as an adviser in both the
(09:13):
Carter and Reagan Whitehouses in the mid nineteen eighties. The
marriage ended in a spectacularly acrimonious public divorce. Leah said
bell I had emotionally and physically abused her. Bell I
accused his wife of having multiple affairs, including with the
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which she denied. Bell I later claimed
(09:37):
a friend of hers had threatened to kill him, and
that Leah had thrown their dog off the Golden Gate Bridge,
which he also denied. Bell I was thrown out of
court during the hearings for claiming the judge has slept
of his wife too. The spectacle filled so many columnachres
that Leah's name ended up as an answer to a
(09:57):
question on the game show Jeopardy.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
By the time Paul.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
And Liah met, she longed to get far away from
the gossip and scandal Paul had always wanted to the
world to recognize him for who he believed he was,
a prince, and Leah, glamorous, charming and fearless, made him
feel like one. The couple married in nineteen ninety six,
convinced they could make each other's dreams come true. Soon,
(10:27):
Prince Paul and his wife, now calling herself Princess Leah,
moved to Romania permanently. The Revolutions of nineteen eighty nine
had swept away the Communist dictatorship and left a fledgling republic.
Although he and Leah barely knew the country and there
was no chance of the monarchy being restored, Paul was
convinced that Romania was their destiny. They settled in Bucharest
(10:52):
and began courting public attention. During his dictatorship, Choucescu had
allowed only one Western television show to be broadcast, Dallas.
The idea was that the gaudy lifestyles and petulant feuding
of Texan oil barons would demonstrate the greed and decadence
of America. The idea backfired. Dallas was a smash hit
(11:17):
and j r ewing Its star character, played by Larry Hagman,
became a national idol. At one point, Lea says she
flew into London, where Hagman happened to be, and talked
him into coming. But you know, Princess, I'm kinda retired.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
He told her. Larry, it's going to be the second coming.
Believe me, she said. Bringing Jr.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
To Romania made headlines, but it didn't bring Paul any
closer to being recognized. Early on, he made a pilgrimage
to Pelej's Castle, a neo Renaissance palace on the medieval
route linking Transylvania to Wallachia. Paul's ancestors had constructed the
Gothic spires that still overlook the Carpathian Mountains. Paul had
(12:04):
only ever seen them in photographs, but when he got there,
government officials would didn't let him in. His elderly uncle, Michael,
was still living in exile in Switzerland at the time,
but he too had begun making trips home. They'd never spoken,
but Paul held out hope for some kind of reconciliation.
(12:25):
He sent Michael a heartfelt letter by registered posts. There
was no response. On the occasions that Paul and Lea
found themselves at the same events as Michael or his children.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
They were ignored. Then, in the.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Run up to Romania's accessions of the EU in the
mid two thousands, the country passed laws allowing people who'd
lost property or other assets during communism to try and
reclaim them.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Suddenly there was a path. If Paul could.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Convince Romanian courts that he had a legitimate claim, he
wouldn't only become wealthy, he might force his a strange
family to finally recognize him. By early two thousand and six,
trying to live like a prince and a princess was
becoming a burden. Paul and Leah had been in Romania
for several years, supported by a meager nuity provided by
(13:18):
his father. The couple's attempts to jumpstart the complex reclamation
process had stalled. That's when Paul was first contacted by
a man who claimed he could turn his dreams into reality.
When they met in person in a lawyer's office in
downtown Bucharest, the man introduced himself as Remus Treca. In
(13:43):
his thirties, Treaca was tanned, with a chiseled jaw and
a whiff of money. He'd made millions in the Romanian
telecom sector, and he enjoyed the good life, expensive suits,
fine cigars, and rare wine. He owned a yacht, which
he named after his wife, and sailed around Monte Carlo.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
His estate in Romania.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Was equipped with a helipad, an Olympic sized swimming pool,
and a town for the kids. Treaca told Paul that
he represented a group of anonymous international investors which controlled
an offshore company called Reciplia.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
This consortium had.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Become aware of Paul's claim and was interested in partnering.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Reciplia had the resources.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Treeca assured Paul to hire the best lawyers and was
willing to pay him several million euros upfront, in addition
to a substantial monthly allowance and a luxury car. This
was money that would allow Paul to finally live like
a prince. In exchange, Reciplia wanted Paul to hand over
fifty percent of any royal assets they won. He didn't
(14:52):
like the idea of handing over such a large amount
of his inheritance to people. He didn't know that Paul
could see without heavyweight assistance, he might end up with nothing.
It would take several years for Paul to find out
that reciply A's large at financial backer was a man
named Benny Steinmetz. The Israeli billionaire, then in his fifties,
(15:16):
had piercing blue eyes and a seemingly insatiable appetite for
making high risk deals in extremely corrupt countries. He'd inherited
his family's diamond business and expanded from selling precious stones
to sourcing them directly in Africa. Steinmetz made headlines around
the world in two thousand and eight for securing a
(15:39):
vast iron ore mining concession in Guinea with terms so
favorable that rivals were left wondering how he'd pulled it off.
Dubbed the deal of the Century, it netted a staggering
profit of several billion dollars in less than two years
after his company flipped a stake in the project to
the Brazilian miner Varleet. After that, says one person who
(16:03):
knows him well, Benny was always looking for a lot
of upside. Guys like Benny, they don't care about a
twenty percent return. They're looking for huge bets, a minimum
of ten times or ideally thirty times on their money.
The Prince Paul deal promised exactly that, even if Reciplyia's
upfront costs for lawyers and paus walking around money reached
(16:26):
upwards of twenty million euros. The potential payout would still
be immense. An initial assessment found the Romanian royal fortune
could be worth as much as one billion dollars. At
one stage, there was even the idea that the country's
gold reserves belonged to the royal family. The Steinmetz associate said,
(16:46):
like how Congo belonged to King Leopold of Belgium. Benny
looked at the underlying assets and the value is there,
he said. The past few decades have not been particularly
glorious ones for European monarchs and former royals, with most
restitution claims faltering. In two thousand and two, Greece's deposed
(17:07):
King Constantine the Second was awarded a tiny fraction of
the three hundred and twenty million pounds and seized the
states he claimed to be owed by the government. Vittorio Emanuele,
son of Umberto the Second, punched his cousin in the
face to the party in two thousand and four during
a row over which of them was the true heir
to Italy's non existent throne. He later sued the state
(17:30):
for more than two hundred million euros of confiscated property
and lost. Juan Carlos, the First of Spain was forced
to abdicate in twenty fourteen after a string of financial scandals,
and last year, the heirs of Germany's Kaiservilhelm the Second
gave up on a nearly decade long battle to regain
hundreds of works of art, the imperial crown and scepter,
(17:52):
and various castles. After several months, considering Reciplia's audacious offer,
Paul decided to sign the agreement. Steinmetz would provide the cash. Treaca,
the flashy businessman, was going to be on the ground
in Romania with the lawyers and local authorities, but to
succeed they needed to recruit a number of other specialists,
(18:16):
each with a different set of highly valuable skills. First
was Tao Silberstein, a former Israeli Special forces commando turned
international political consultant. He'd built a reputation for being cunning
and sometimes ruthless, cutting his teeth working for the US
posters and consultants James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, and later
(18:40):
advising politicians in Austria, Ukraine, and Romania.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Silberstein's role was to keep.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Steinmetz updated on what was happening and to troubleshoot the unexpected.
Tao is one of the brightest people I've ever met,
said one person who knows him. He's an expert and
getting inside people's heads. Then there was Robert Rossu, a
partner at one of Romania's most prestigious law firms, picked
(19:07):
to lead the legal.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Charge on behind the Prince.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Rossu's firm spent weeks doing extensive due diligence on the
strength of the claims, producing the report that pegged the
assets that Prince Paul had a claim to but one
billion dollars. Once assembled, the team got to work on
what they code named Project Prince Treeca was busy from
(19:31):
the start. Working with Rosu, he convinced a Romanian court
to hand over Paul's share of Snagov Forest, a forty
seven hector nature reserve formerly owned by the royal family.
Project Prince soon had a far more valuable target, a
vast tract of land in the north of Bucharest called
the Banessa Royal Farm, formerly belonging to King Carol. The
(19:54):
Second Banessa, was an agricultural estate that had once served
the royal household. If that land could be redeveloped, it
could be worth hundreds of millions of euros. There was
one significant hurdle. The land was occupied by a state
research body, the Bucharest Plant Protection Research and Development Institute.
(20:15):
Its director, an elderly man named Horria Iliescue, feared the
institute would be shut down if the land was signed
over Under the obscure regulation involved, Iliescue's refusal would have
been enough to block the deal. Wooing him took some time. Then,
early one morning in September two thousand and eight, Treca
(20:38):
noticed he had missed numerous calls. The businessman had invited
Iliescu to take a cruise on his yacht in Monte
Carlo during an upcoming trip to the south of France.
Good morning, Treeca said. When he called back, I apologize.
I was playing tennis. I called several times, because this
is what I call being polite, Iliescu replied. The director,
(21:02):
seemingly nervous and bumbling, launched into a rambling explanation of
telephone Ettiger. Despite having spent months refusing to countenance to transfer,
Iliescu was now eagerly looking forward to his trip with Trica,
he wanted to confirm the details of his hotel in France.
Not long afterwards, Iliescue got on a flight from Bucharest
(21:24):
de Nie, where he was picked up in a Mercedes
Vito Van by Treeca's driver and taken to Monaco. Once there,
he and Treca had lunch and sailed on Treca's yacht.
Exactly what happened on the boat is unclear, but after
returning to Romania, Iliescu appears to have undergone a complete
(21:44):
change of opinion about signing over Vanessa Royal Farm. Iliescu
died of natural causes not long afterwards. Treca denies that
he paid for Iliescu's trip to France.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Paul meanwhile, was enjoying the lifestyle of a true prince.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Flushed with his recipliar allowance, he and Leah hired a
chauffeur to.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Shuttle them around Boukarest.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Two people who knew him around this time said Paul
had also started to frequent exclusive private members clubs in London,
such as five Hartford Street and Mayfair. There was something though,
that money couldn't fix the indignity of being called Lambrino.
At one point, Paul had traveled to a public records
office in Central Book Arrest in search of his father's
(22:32):
birth certificate.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Accompanied by his.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Lawyer, Paul marched in and asked to see the document.
The line that should have affirmed paternity was there, just
as blank as he'd been told. In small letters, he
wrote in the name King carolcond this little act of
defiance hadn't changed anything, but winning Vanessa would. That would
(22:56):
put Project Prints on the path to reclaiming Paul's share.
In September two thousand and eight, the ord of the
Research Institute voted to allow the return of the land.
The following January, Vanessa Royal Farm was officially transferred to Reciplia.
(23:20):
The feeling of triumph didn't last. Some members of Project
Prince were becoming suspicious of one another. Some worried that
Treeca was skimming money from the operation, something he strongly denied.
Paul also started to wonder if something was off. Rather
than selling Vanessa and distributing the prophets, Reciplia told him
(23:40):
it wanted to develop the land instead delaying his payout.
Paul and Leah complained to Silberstein, the political consultant. He
was busy trying to keep the couple plicated by getting
them favorable coverage in the Romanian press. In October twenty eleven,
Silberstein rang up a friendly journalist, Listen, you have to
(24:01):
help more with the princess, he said. The fact that
she's nagging, it's not helpful for the project, you know.
Paul started to notice people following him and his wife
around Bukarest. Then he began to suspect that Reciplia had
ex Mossad officers on its payroll. They, he said, told
(24:21):
us on one point they were there to make us
feel safe, but they were there to find out our weaknesses,
he said. Steinmetz denied employing any former intelligence officers during
Project Prince, calling it a blatant lie and another deceitful
rumor aimed at conveying false impressions to keep.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
A lid on things.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Silberstein decided to reveal who was really behind Project Prince.
He rang, Leah, Okay, I want to do something, he said.
I want to bring someone you've never met before with me,
someone who's invested everything in the company. It's mister Steinmetz.
He came to Romania on a special occasion that evening.
(25:04):
Paul and Leah met with Steinmetz at their lawyer's book
Arest office. Paul recollected telling the Israeli about his concerns.
We don't get what's happening. We don't know what's going on,
he said. Paul remembered Steinmetz's calming the couple's worries. Steinmetz
disputed this account of the meeting, saying it was a
courtesy visit of maybe two, three or four minutes.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
A few weeks.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Later, Silberstein was dismayed to find the meeting had not
had the intended effect the Prince an alarm, Silberstein told
his friend over the phone, had started a war with us.
Convinced he was being conned, Paul was threatening to report
Silberstein and the rest of the team to the police.
(25:50):
Can you imagine Silberstein raised down the phone after working
five and a half years for these people, helping them everywhere,
paying five million in cash on their behalf. When I
met them, they were completely broke. Completely. Everything you see
is our money project. Prince Silberstein worried was falling apart.
(26:12):
He had no idea how right he was. Laura Kadruta
Caves didn't look like the person Romania's matro politicians and
gangster's most feared. In her early forties, with jet black
hair cut into an anna winter bob, she often wore
pink lipstick. Caves had been Romania's youngest ever prosecutor general.
(26:36):
Then in twenty thirteen, she was appointed to lead a
new anti graft office called the National Anti Corruption Directorate.
Her mandate was to route out high level crimes in
one of the EU's most corrupt countries, and she moved fast.
In her first two years on the job, Cavesy indicted
fourteen current or former members of Parliament, four government ministers,
(27:00):
the mayor of Bucharest, and stunning the country the prime minister.
It was lonely work. Cavesy, who'd grown up in a
small Transylvanian town, was known to say she didn't have friends,
just acquaintances. She often walked alone around Bucharest, watched over
by state security agents. The Prime minister, who her investigation
(27:24):
had forced out of office, claimed that she was trying
to make a name by inventing and imagining facts that
Kavasi believed she was fighting for the soul of her country.
For the first time in Romania's modern history, the powerful
were being held to account.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Kavesi is currently serving as the EU's first Chief Prosecutor.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
They didn't know it, but Kvasi had the members of
Project Prints in her sites. Recording devices had been installed
in Paul and Leah's home, as well as on the
phone lines of every other member of the Project. Agents
with Romania's intelligence service, the SRI were following their every move,
having come to believe the Project Prince entered a national
(28:10):
security threat. The spies had shown Cavesy what they deemed
proof of a criminal plot by foreigners to defraud the state.
In late twenty fifteen, Cavesy appeared on national television to
announce a sweeping new indictment. Prince Paul, Treaca, Steinmetz Silberstein
and others, she said, had been charged with establishing a
(28:33):
criminal group to bribe and corrupt public officials, all of
it in what she said were bogus inheritance claims. The
damages the group had inflicted on the state from reclaiming
Vanessa and the other land exceeded one hundred million euros.
It was an enormous amount, Cavesi said on air. It
(28:53):
would be the equivalent of the allowance that approximately one
million children in Romania could receive for one year.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
She said.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Paul, who come to reclaim his lost homeland, was about
to become one of its most wanted fugitives. Part two, Runaway.
It was five thirty am on a Sunday in December
(29:22):
twenty twenty when men arrived at Paul and Leah's door
in book Arest. Leah was awoken by the buzzer and
the sound of voices on the other side of the intercom.
Five policemen were outside, and they were looking for Paul.
She opened the front gate and asked to see some identification.
(29:43):
They began to rush from room to room, searching under
beds and inside The couple's walking safe but her husband
wasn't there. Leah knew she had to warn him. Cavasi
had been pursuing the members of Project Prints for a while.
Leah picked up a phone, suspecting that every line in
the house was Wiatt hated darling. She said when she
(30:06):
got through to Paul, stay calm. There's this huge, huge confusion.
You cannot leave for Romania. They will arrest you. I
can't give you any more information, but please please get
a lawyer. Then she hung up on the other end
of the line.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Paul was stunned.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
He put the phone down and sat alone in his
Lisbon hotel room, grappling with the fact that he was
now an international fugitive. If he stayed in Portugal, he
would probably be arrested and eventually sent back to Romania.
So Prince Paul, direct descendant of Queen Victoria of England
(30:47):
and Czar Alexander the Second of Russia, decided to Lamin. First,
he had to get out of Portugal as fast as possible.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
The airport was too risky.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Paul went to an ATM and took out several thousand euros,
stuffing them in his pocket. Whatever came next, credit cards
would leave a trail. Paul hailed a taxi and asked
the driver would you be okay to go to Madrid.
The six hour trip across an international border wasn't exactly
a normal fare, but the bemused Cabby checked his schedule
(31:21):
and agreed. As they sped off, Paul ran through his options.
He couldn't book a hotel using his real name. Where
could he go.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
He knew some.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
People he trusted in Naples, but getting there required crossing
from Spain to France and then into Italy. Without attracting attention.
He feared the Romanian arrest warrant could already have been
sent to every European police force. If so, every border
was a potential trap. Once his taxi arrived in Madrid,
(31:54):
Paul got out, handed the driver five hundred duas in
cash and hailed another cap. The switch might throw off
anyone following, he thought. Soon he was headed to Monte Carlo,
a day long drive. As the hours passed in the
back of the taxi, Paul thought about Lea, When would
he be able to see her again. He thought about Romania,
(32:18):
the homeland he'd spent his life dreaming about and was
now trying to put him in prison. And he thought
of his grandfather, King Carol, who had fled across Europe.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Eighty years earlier.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
About an hour outside Monaco, Paul saw what he was
dreading a police checkpoint. It was too late to turn around,
so the taxi pulled over and a French officer instructed
Paul to hand over his papers. He gave his British passport,
hoping that the arrest warrant was issued on his Romanian documents.
(32:51):
Where are you going, the policeman asked, sheepishly, Paul said
he was on his way to Italy. You're going to
Italy by taxi. Paul's heart was pounding as he confirmed
he was. The police officer walked away with the documents.
While Paul waited. All he could do was silently reassure himself,
(33:14):
at least in France, better to be arrested here than
in Romania. The police officer returned to the taxi slowly.
Then he handed over the passport and waved them on.
As Paul snaked down the Mediterranean coast towards Naples. The
(33:35):
other members of Project Prints were in total disarray. After
several years battling Covesi's chargers, some of them had been
convicted and sentenced to prison in a country with some
of the most notoriously brutal jails in Europe. Into polar
rest warrants had been issued for Paul as well as
Steinmetz and Silberstein had been sentenced to five years in
(33:57):
prison each. Steinmetz was in Dubai at the time, out
of reach, but Treeca was already in a Romanian jail
serving a seven year sentence. Even Rosu, the high powered lawyer,
had been convicted. Treeca told me that he had only
ever acted legally during his work on Project Prints, and
that the conviction was unjust, and that there were serious
(34:20):
problems and errors with the evidence that was used against him,
including the use of wire taps gathered by Romania's secret
intelligence service. Treeca also alleged that an unnamed Romanian prosecutor
threatened him to gather evidence against other members of the team.
The prosecutor told me that he knows I am innocent,
but that he will go ahead with the case if
(34:41):
I do not accept to make allegations against certain persons
of interest to him, Treaca said. Silberstein declined to comment
in book Arest. Leah had no way of contacting her
husband or even knowing where he was. Then a coded
message came through passed from Paul via a lawyer, reading
(35:02):
I am in the place where I was a child.
She was overcome with relief, realizing that Paul was in France.
He traveled all the way across Europe in taxis to Naples,
only to decide he would be safest in the country
of his birth.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
After all, he was hiding in a village.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Leah was still stuck in Romania, being hounded by the
police about his whereabouts, she said. The authorities told her
that she would be liable for the costs of pursuing
her fugitive husband for as much as nine million euros.
The house she owned with Paul was later repossessed by
the bank to be sold for the value of the mortgage.
Then men arrived to take the furniture, but Leah vowed
(35:46):
to do whatever she could. They didn't understand that even
though it was blessed to be born an educated part
of my life in America, I've also got a stronger backbone,
she told me. I'm not able to be broken. Project
Prince was not the only one of Benny Steinmetz's high risk,
high reward deals going bad. In fact, his legal problems
(36:10):
around the world seemed to be spiraling out of control.
Several years before the Romanian indictment, a former employee of
Steinmetz's who had worked on the Guinea mining deal, was
arrested by the FBI. Federal agents had secretly recorded him
plotting to destroy evidence suggesting millions of dollars in bribes
had been paid by Steinmetz's company to one of the
(36:33):
ex wives of Guinea's former dictator. The Guinean government then
accused Steinmetz's bribery and said it would strip the rights
to the mine from his company and Valet, the Brazilian miner.
The US probe into the Guinea deal hadn't implicated Steinmetz directly,
but he had been charged by a Swiss court for
bribery relating to the deal. He appeared to sink under
(36:56):
the weight of a growing number of civil and criminal
cases brought against him. In twenty eighteen, Steinmetz's holding company
put itself into voluntary administration to try and protect its
assets from further legal claims. Then Varlet accused Steinmetz of
deliberately misleading it into a deal he knew was tainted
by corruption. Varlet launched a claim for billions and damages
(37:20):
in courts in London and New York. By December twenty
twenty one, a year after the police arrived at Paul
and Leah's door, Steinmetz had been arrested in Greece on
a European arrest warrant issued by Romania and barred from
leaving the country before an extradition hearing in Romania. Someone
had been trying to hit back. Shortly after Cavesy appeared
(37:44):
on national television to announce the Project Prince Indictment. An
ex colleague contacted her about a strange experience. The colleague
had been approached by a recruitment agency based in the
UK about a lucrative job, but when she went for
an interview, they only seemed to be interested in asking
about working with Cavesy. Then someone using a British number
(38:07):
rang up Cavasi's elderly farm at home, claiming they were
organizing a conference in London they wanted to pay him
to attend. Her father, who didn't speak English, was suspicious
and told his daughter. More members of her family were
approached by odd sounding outfits, seemingly using job offers as
a pretext to gather information about Kvasi. In March twenty sixteen,
(38:44):
two athletic young men, one with a Belgian passport and
the other an Israeli national, flew into Bucharest's Henry Cowander airport.
One had reddish brown hair and a beard, and was
wearing blue jeans, white sneakers and a black jacket. The
other was dressed all in black apart from a white shirt.
(39:04):
They checked into a hotel downtown and got to work
soon and Kevesi began to get security alerts on her
official and personal email accounts, suggesting someone as trying to
hack her. The two men were undercover agents dispatched in
Romania as part of an espionage operation targeting Cavesy called
(39:26):
Project Tornado. They weren't spies working for a government. They
were from the Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube, founded
in twenty ten. Black Cube advertises itself as being made
up of a select group of veterans from Israeli elite
intelligence units. The company became internationally notorious for its work
(39:49):
on behalf of convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein during his
attempts to stifle investigations into his crimes. Steinmetz has been
one of Black Cube's most important clients. He used undercover
agents from the firm to secretly record executives from Varlas,
admitting that they were aware the Guinea deal they were
suing him over had been.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Corrupt from the start.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
As a result, Varley eventually withdrew its legal claim against Steinmetz.
On its website, Black Cube cites its work for Steinmetz,
which involved a team of twenty agents, as one of
its most successful cases. Unfortunately, for the two Black Cube agents.
The Romanian security services had become aware of their presence
and they were soon arrested. They were later released with
(40:35):
suspended sentences. What never became clear was who the client
behind the operation to dig up dirt on Kovesi was.
Steinmetz was one of several people suspected and investigated by
the Romanian police's organized crime unit, but the case was
later closed due to a lack of evidence. Steinmetz denies
(40:57):
having any role in Black Cube's work in Romania and
said he had only ever employed the company once. He
called the suspicions raised against him a clear slander by
the Romanian authority to justify the prosecution against me, which
was clearly politically motivated. When Black Cube CEO Dan Zarella
(41:18):
was interviewed by Romanian police, he gave a puzzling explanation
as to why his firm had taken on the Caves operation.
According to a transcript obtained by Haretz, the Israeli newspaper,
Zarella said the company was hired by a former Romanian
intelligence officer who claimed that the work they would carry
out was on behalf of the SRI, the country's spy agency.
(41:41):
Black Cube later said it was hired by a senior
official in Romania and fully cooperated with the Romanian authorities
to solve this matter. In France, Paul had eventually reported
himself to the authorities and defeated a first request by
Romania to bring him back to serve out his sentence.
By April twenty twenty four, Lea had joined him. Emboldened
(42:04):
by his victory, Paul decided to accept an invitation from
an order of the Knights of Malta to visit the
Mediterranean island. His lawyers warned him he was taking a
huge risk, but Paul was certain the Romanian government wouldn't
try and have him arrested. He flew to Valetta with
Leah and Pastory immigration without a problem. On their third
(42:27):
day on the island, three Martes policemen approached Paul and
arrested him on the orders of the Romanian state. Leah
watched as her husband was taken away. By that evening,
Paul was in Corodino Prison, a penitentiary built in the
nineteenth century under British colonial rule. It was a shock,
he said, you go from being in a five star
(42:49):
hotel to being in prison. Paul knew the Romanian state
would press as hard as possible to have him extradited. Rosu,
the lawyer convicted for his work on Project Prince, had
been jailed in conditions he described as a metal cage.
He was later acquitted and released. In Malta, Paul was
(43:10):
placed in a section of the jail reserved for high
profile inmates. One was a computer hacker awaiting extradition to
the US. Another was the Maltese businessman on trial for
the murder of the journalist Daphne Caroana Galitzia. During his
first days, Paul tried to stay calm, like a good
sovereign and make conversation with the other prisoners. None of
(43:34):
them seemed to find the presence of a fugitive prints
on their block particularly remarkable. In the mornings, the prisoners
played football in the courtyard. Sometimes Paul would watch cable television,
mostly CNN, but this was difficult as he wasn't allowed
his metal rimmed glasses in prison, they were deemed a
security threat. Most days they were served fried food, which
(43:56):
Paul described as like KFC. He looked forward to thursdays,
when the inmates were given roast lamb to keep his
mind occupied. He read the firm by John Grisham and
bonded with a dutch Man accused of international cocaine trafficking.
He wasn't too bad, I suppose, Paul told me. He
took two or three showers a day. Two months passed
(44:21):
as Paul's lawyers worked to have him released on bail.
Finally the Maltese authorities agreed. The other inmates applauded as
Prince Paul walked out of the iron gates of the prison.
He felt triumphant, even though he knew there was another
painful way ahead of him, this time to see if
Maltese judges would side with him or the Romanian state.
(44:44):
And the first time I met Paul was in early
August twenty twenty four. We were inside Malta's courts of Justice,
where I just watched as a judge read out a
lengthy administrative procedure in Maltese. This resulted in another uncertainty
laced delay. Paul was under strict bail conditions, reporting to
(45:05):
the police twice a day. His passport had been temporarily confiscated.
The next morning we met again at a local hotel.
Lea and Paul's lawyers were present this time. Paul told
me he was holding up well and he was relieved
to be with his family, but he was noticeably shaken.
At times, he was energized and defiant. At others his
(45:28):
voice became weary. In court, Paul's Maltese lawyer, Jason as
a Party, argued that Romania's prisons were so overcrowded and
dilapidated that it would be an abuse of his client's
human rights to keep him there. During the hearings, the
Romanian government sent four officials to Malta to put ford
its case for extra lighting Paul. It's quite abnormal. As
(45:51):
a Party told me, I do not recall any case
where the representatives of the foreign government came over to testify.
Sitting with him, it was clear that Paul was exhausted.
He'd fought his entire life to be accepted, yet here
he was facing disgrace and years behind bars, not as
Prince Paul of Romania, but as Paul Lambrino Krook. As
(46:17):
Paul waited to learn his fate, I traveled to Athens
to meet Steinmetz. Thanks to his project Prince Conviction, Greece
is one of only three European countries the billionaire can
travel to without fearing arrest. The Israeli had beaten an
attempt by the Romanian state to extradite him after he
was briefly arrested in Athens back in twenty twenty one.
(46:38):
We met on a warm summer evening on the terrace
of a taverna not far from Syntagma Square. It was
the middle of August and the restaurant was nearly deserted. Later,
he told me that he never did anything illegal in
Romania and was never aware of any of his partners
paying bribes. It was a pure business, he told me.
(47:00):
Steinmetz's heavily accented English is delivered in the near whisper
of a man accustomed to those around him falling silent
when he talks. We do hundreds of deals in different sectors,
and what we saw was a good financial opportunity. The
Romanian conviction, Steinmetz told me, was politically motivated by local
(47:21):
officials who didn't want to see a foreigner succeed. It
was all fixed in advance, he said. It was a
rigged game, calling the conviction against him a joke, a
Romanian joke. In Switzerland, Steinmetz has been convicted for bribery
in one of Africa's poorest countries. He is appealing, but
(47:44):
the chances of him serving a prison sentence are slim.
The Guineaan state has since settled its claims against his company.
Steinmetz told me he was unfazed by the fact that
Romania's European arrest warrant for him is still outstanding. What
do I need to worry about to worry about something
I haven't done? Because I can't fly to Europe, I
(48:06):
can fly to the rest of the world. I can
do whatever I want. As I left, I was alarmed
by the thought that perhaps he was right. Judges across
Europe have independently cast serious doubts about Romania's case against
the Project Prince Crew, with Greece, Cyprus, Malta and France
(48:30):
all independently rejecting attempts by Romania to extradite Steinmetz and Paul.
Interpol later ruled to delete the warrants against them, deciding,
according to a ruling scene by the FT, that the
use of secret service wiretapping was deemed contrary to fair
trial standards. The ruling also said there were serious concerns
(48:51):
regarding the existence of political elements in the Romanian criminal
case against them. Late last summer, paulsted in a Martese
court for the last time, as it was announced that
Romania's attempts to extradite him had been rejected. He was
free to return to France, and Lea was joyed to
be going back to Paris. What was that film? If
(49:13):
it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium. Tomorrow we'll stay with
my husband's dear friend who has a castle in France.
From a dungeon to a castle and one day, how
many people from the Midwest can say that? Weeks later
I learned that Paul had managed to track down several
of the missing paintings spirited out of Romania in the
(49:34):
nineteen forties. Based on Paul's legal claims, a French judge
has frozen the transfer of two El Greco's, opening up
the possibility that, after three decades, he might finally receive
some small piece of his inheritance. During one of our
last conversations, I asked him whether, after all the setbacks,
(49:56):
the arrest, warrants, the fleeing and jail, he ever regretted
having returned to Romania. I'm from birth from conception, the
grandson of King Carol. He said, I respect Romania's republic,
but I am really the rightful Crown Prince. The Fugitive
(50:27):
Prince was written by me Myles Johnson and edited by
Matt Veller. It was produced by Misha Frankel Duval and
Laura Clarke. Mix and sound design were by Breen Turner.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
RYL. Brumley is the FT's global head of Audio.
Pushkin Hi Hot Money listeners, it's Miles Johnson here, host
of season two The New Narcos. I'm here to tell
you to keep an eye on your Hot Money feed.
My colleagues are currently cooking up a third season of
the podcast, so watch this space. In the meantime, I
recently wrote a long read for the FT's weekend magazine,
(00:38):
which we thought you might like to listen to. It's
a story about a prince, a contested royal fortune, and
the deal he struck with a notorious billionaire to get
hold of his inheritance. It features international corruption, missing Caravaggio's
espionage operations, daring cross border escapes, and even a cameo
from JR.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
From Dallas.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It's called the Fugitive Prints. And just for our Hot
Money listeners, here's the audio version of that article. And
if you want to enjoy more articles like this one,
for a limited time only, you can save forty percent
on an annual Digital Financial Time subscription. Go to fd
dot com forward slash Prince offer to sign up.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Part one Inheritance.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
In September nineteen forty, King Carol Second's armoured train hurtled
towards Romania's western border a board with his paramour, a
small group of quarters as three poodles, and thirty truckloads
of the royal fortune. For years, the Romanian monarch had
held out against pressure from Hitler, but now his reign
(01:49):
was over. The only question was whether he would escape alive.
At Timasaura, several miles down the line, a Fascist death.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Squad would be waiting with machine guns.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Not stopping, the train ran the risk of being derailed
by dynamite. Stopping probably meant being executed. Before the war,
Carol had been famous for loving women, hunting, and fast cars,
and for spending lavishly.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
On all three. He'd been a playboy and a wild card.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Now he gave the train operator one command, full speed ahead.
As the train flew through Timosaura station, gunfire shattered the
carriage windows. The king and his passengers threw themselves to
the floor, ducking for their lives, until moments later the
noise faded into the distance. Eventually they reached the border.
(02:49):
Carol lived the rest of his life in exile, spending
his last years in a villa in Portugal, much like
other fallen European kings such as Umberto thecond of Italy
and an array of counts and countesses displaced by the war. Carol,
who died in nineteen fifty three, didn't live long enough
to see the rise of Nikolai Chiocescu's communist dictator. After
(03:10):
the end of Romania's monarchy, the new regime seized the
immense wealth Carol had left behind, worth the equivalent of
billions of euros today. Among other treasures, this included extravagant palaces,
vast tracts of land, and vaults of gold. Many of
the prize possessions Carol managed to flee with, including one
(03:30):
of the largest rare stamp collections in the world, were
sold off in exile, but some treasures, including forty old
master paintings by Caravaggio, Grembrand, Breugel and el Greco, seemingly vanished.
It was a loss that anybody would mourn, but for
one man, there was a part of King Carol the
Second's inheritance more valuable than anything his name. That was
(03:55):
something he'd spent his entire adult life trying to reclaim.
In a final desperate attempt to get it, he would
strike an audacious deal with a crew of international businessmen
and convicted criminals that ultimately led to exile and infamy.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
His given name is Paul. To his friends, he's Prince Paul. Today.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
He's in his seventies and a flash of gray runs
through his slick back hair, but his bushy eyebrows and
pouty lips retains some boyishness. He favors the uniform of
European playboys, tailored sports jackets and luxury loafers. He speaks
in the clipped, French accented manner of someone who attended
a continental finishing school. Depending on who you believe, his
(04:43):
true name is Prince Paul Philippe al Romanee, Crown Prince
of Romania, grandson of King Carol the Second and a
direct descendant of Queen Victoria of England and Czar Alexander
the Second of Russia. To his enemies, he's simply Paul Lambrino,
a fantasist who, even after everything that happened, claims airship
(05:06):
to a non existent throne. Paul, who was born in
France in nineteen forty eight, grew up with his father's stories.
He was told about Romania's fairy tale palaces, lustrous countryside
and peasant folk songs. It sounded like a distant fantasy,
but it was also a place of sorrow. It was
(05:27):
the site of an injustice that cast a shadow over
his entire life. Romania, his father explained, wasn't just their
lost country, it was their stolen kingdom, and Paul was
a prince. Paul's lineage stemmed from a royal controversy dating
back more than a century. When Carol was still a
(05:49):
hard partying heir to the throne, he eloped with a
beautiful young socialite named Zizi Lambrino. Carol's father was furious,
and he ordered the union annulled. The young Carol was
temporarily banished to a monastery and forbidden from ever seeing
her again, but Lambrino was pregnant with a son Paul's father.
(06:11):
On his Romanian birth certificate, the space for the father's
name should have read King Carol Second, but it was blank.
The surname was listed as Lambrino, legally recording his illegitimacy.
As a teen, Paul was packed off to Britain, where
he attended Millfield Boarding School in Somerset, before deciding to
(06:33):
skip university to make his way in nineteen sixties London.
He worked variously as a fashion photographer and an art dealer,
living in a flat off the King's Road in Chelsea.
In his late twenties, Paul began to have vivid dreams
about his grandfather after the Lambrino affair. Carol had been
briefly married to a Greek princess with whom he'd had
(06:55):
another son, Michael. This legitimate heir had never acknowledged Paul
or his father, so in the late nineteen seventies, Paul
traveled to Portugal to seek out the woman who'd been
Carol's wife at the end of his life life she
was still living in the villa, but when Paul got
there he found she was gravely ill.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
On her deathbed, she left him Carol's.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Gold signet ring, embossed with the symbol of the Romanian
monarchy surrounded by a crown of thorns. Paul began wearing
it religiously. Then one evening in the early nineteen nineties,
Paul met his own princess. He was at a black
tie charity ball in London when he spotted her, an
(07:41):
elegant woman in a long Valentino gown with dark hair
and a regal bearing. Her name was Leah Triff, She
was an American divorcee in her early forties who dressed
like Elizabeth Taylor and talked like Joan Rivers. She was
at the party playing hooky from her postgraduate studies at
Oxford Paul until then a resolute bachelor was instantly taken.
(08:06):
They had plenty in common. Leah was of Romanian Herite two.
They were both shameless name droppers, referencing famous acquaintances from
the Dalai Lama to the Sultan of Brunei, and both
had made regrettable mistakes in their youth, but it may
have been their differences that truly bonded them. Leah was
born in the late nineteen forties and grew up in Dearborn, Michigan.
(08:29):
In her early twenties, she married the famously pugnacious San
Francisco celebrity attorney Melvin Belli, who represented Jajar Gabour and
the Rolling Stones. He was forty two years her senior.
Leah became a well known San Francisco socialite, attending art
openings in white cocked hats and mustard suede suits, and
(08:50):
throwing parties in the eighteenth floor suite of the Intercontinental.
Mark Hopkins hotel for guests such as Joe DiMaggio and
Rudolph Nuriev. In nineteen eighty four, she unsuccessfully ran as
a Democrat for the California State Senate and was later
fined for making disguise campaign contributions to herself. That didn't
stop her from working as an adviser in both the
(09:13):
Carter and Reagan Whitehouses in the mid nineteen eighties. The
marriage ended in a spectacularly acrimonious public divorce. Leah said
bell I had emotionally and physically abused her. Bell I
accused his wife of having multiple affairs, including with the
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which she denied. Bell I later claimed
(09:37):
a friend of hers had threatened to kill him, and
that Leah had thrown their dog off the Golden Gate Bridge,
which he also denied. Bell I was thrown out of
court during the hearings for claiming the judge has slept
of his wife too. The spectacle filled so many columnachres
that Leah's name ended up as an answer to a
(09:57):
question on the game show Jeopardy.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
By the time Paul.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
And Liah met, she longed to get far away from
the gossip and scandal Paul had always wanted to the
world to recognize him for who he believed he was,
a prince, and Leah, glamorous, charming and fearless, made him
feel like one. The couple married in nineteen ninety six,
convinced they could make each other's dreams come true. Soon,
(10:27):
Prince Paul and his wife, now calling herself Princess Leah,
moved to Romania permanently. The Revolutions of nineteen eighty nine
had swept away the Communist dictatorship and left a fledgling republic.
Although he and Leah barely knew the country and there
was no chance of the monarchy being restored, Paul was
convinced that Romania was their destiny. They settled in Bucharest
(10:52):
and began courting public attention. During his dictatorship, Choucescu had
allowed only one Western television show to be broadcast, Dallas.
The idea was that the gaudy lifestyles and petulant feuding
of Texan oil barons would demonstrate the greed and decadence
of America. The idea backfired. Dallas was a smash hit
(11:17):
and j r ewing Its star character, played by Larry Hagman,
became a national idol. At one point, Lea says she
flew into London, where Hagman happened to be, and talked
him into coming. But you know, Princess, I'm kinda retired.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
He told her. Larry, it's going to be the second coming.
Believe me, she said. Bringing Jr.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
To Romania made headlines, but it didn't bring Paul any
closer to being recognized. Early on, he made a pilgrimage
to Pelej's Castle, a neo Renaissance palace on the medieval
route linking Transylvania to Wallachia. Paul's ancestors had constructed the
Gothic spires that still overlook the Carpathian Mountains. Paul had
(12:04):
only ever seen them in photographs, but when he got there,
government officials would didn't let him in. His elderly uncle, Michael,
was still living in exile in Switzerland at the time,
but he too had begun making trips home. They'd never spoken,
but Paul held out hope for some kind of reconciliation.
(12:25):
He sent Michael a heartfelt letter by registered posts. There
was no response. On the occasions that Paul and Lea
found themselves at the same events as Michael or his children.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
They were ignored. Then, in the.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Run up to Romania's accessions of the EU in the
mid two thousands, the country passed laws allowing people who'd
lost property or other assets during communism to try and
reclaim them.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Suddenly there was a path. If Paul could.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Convince Romanian courts that he had a legitimate claim, he
wouldn't only become wealthy, he might force his a strange
family to finally recognize him. By early two thousand and six,
trying to live like a prince and a princess was
becoming a burden. Paul and Leah had been in Romania
for several years, supported by a meager nuity provided by
(13:18):
his father. The couple's attempts to jumpstart the complex reclamation
process had stalled. That's when Paul was first contacted by
a man who claimed he could turn his dreams into reality.
When they met in person in a lawyer's office in
downtown Bucharest, the man introduced himself as Remus Treca. In
(13:43):
his thirties, Treaca was tanned, with a chiseled jaw and
a whiff of money. He'd made millions in the Romanian
telecom sector, and he enjoyed the good life, expensive suits,
fine cigars, and rare wine. He owned a yacht, which
he named after his wife, and sailed around Monte Carlo.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
His estate in Romania.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Was equipped with a helipad, an Olympic sized swimming pool,
and a town for the kids. Treaca told Paul that
he represented a group of anonymous international investors which controlled
an offshore company called Reciplia.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
This consortium had.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Become aware of Paul's claim and was interested in partnering.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Reciplia had the resources.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Treeca assured Paul to hire the best lawyers and was
willing to pay him several million euros upfront, in addition
to a substantial monthly allowance and a luxury car. This
was money that would allow Paul to finally live like
a prince. In exchange, Reciplia wanted Paul to hand over
fifty percent of any royal assets they won. He didn't
(14:52):
like the idea of handing over such a large amount
of his inheritance to people. He didn't know that Paul
could see without heavyweight assistance, he might end up with nothing.
It would take several years for Paul to find out
that reciply A's large at financial backer was a man
named Benny Steinmetz. The Israeli billionaire, then in his fifties,
(15:16):
had piercing blue eyes and a seemingly insatiable appetite for
making high risk deals in extremely corrupt countries. He'd inherited
his family's diamond business and expanded from selling precious stones
to sourcing them directly in Africa. Steinmetz made headlines around
the world in two thousand and eight for securing a
(15:39):
vast iron ore mining concession in Guinea with terms so
favorable that rivals were left wondering how he'd pulled it off.
Dubbed the deal of the Century, it netted a staggering
profit of several billion dollars in less than two years
after his company flipped a stake in the project to
the Brazilian miner Varleet. After that, says one person who
(16:03):
knows him well, Benny was always looking for a lot
of upside. Guys like Benny, they don't care about a
twenty percent return. They're looking for huge bets, a minimum
of ten times or ideally thirty times on their money.
The Prince Paul deal promised exactly that, even if Reciplyia's
upfront costs for lawyers and paus walking around money reached
(16:26):
upwards of twenty million euros. The potential payout would still
be immense. An initial assessment found the Romanian royal fortune
could be worth as much as one billion dollars. At
one stage, there was even the idea that the country's
gold reserves belonged to the royal family. The Steinmetz associate said,
(16:46):
like how Congo belonged to King Leopold of Belgium. Benny
looked at the underlying assets and the value is there,
he said. The past few decades have not been particularly
glorious ones for European monarchs and former royals, with most
restitution claims faltering. In two thousand and two, Greece's deposed
(17:07):
King Constantine the Second was awarded a tiny fraction of
the three hundred and twenty million pounds and seized the
states he claimed to be owed by the government. Vittorio Emanuele,
son of Umberto the Second, punched his cousin in the
face to the party in two thousand and four during
a row over which of them was the true heir
to Italy's non existent throne. He later sued the state
(17:30):
for more than two hundred million euros of confiscated property
and lost. Juan Carlos, the First of Spain was forced
to abdicate in twenty fourteen after a string of financial scandals,
and last year, the heirs of Germany's Kaiservilhelm the Second
gave up on a nearly decade long battle to regain
hundreds of works of art, the imperial crown and scepter,
(17:52):
and various castles. After several months, considering Reciplia's audacious offer,
Paul decided to sign the agreement. Steinmetz would provide the cash. Treaca,
the flashy businessman, was going to be on the ground
in Romania with the lawyers and local authorities, but to
succeed they needed to recruit a number of other specialists,
(18:16):
each with a different set of highly valuable skills. First
was Tao Silberstein, a former Israeli Special forces commando turned
international political consultant. He'd built a reputation for being cunning
and sometimes ruthless, cutting his teeth working for the US
posters and consultants James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, and later
(18:40):
advising politicians in Austria, Ukraine, and Romania.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Silberstein's role was to keep.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Steinmetz updated on what was happening and to troubleshoot the unexpected.
Tao is one of the brightest people I've ever met,
said one person who knows him. He's an expert and
getting inside people's heads. Then there was Robert Rossu, a
partner at one of Romania's most prestigious law firms, picked
(19:07):
to lead the legal.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Charge on behind the Prince.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Rossu's firm spent weeks doing extensive due diligence on the
strength of the claims, producing the report that pegged the
assets that Prince Paul had a claim to but one
billion dollars. Once assembled, the team got to work on
what they code named Project Prince Treeca was busy from
(19:31):
the start. Working with Rosu, he convinced a Romanian court
to hand over Paul's share of Snagov Forest, a forty
seven hector nature reserve formerly owned by the royal family.
Project Prince soon had a far more valuable target, a
vast tract of land in the north of Bucharest called
the Banessa Royal Farm, formerly belonging to King Carol. The
(19:54):
Second Banessa, was an agricultural estate that had once served
the royal household. If that land could be redeveloped, it
could be worth hundreds of millions of euros. There was
one significant hurdle. The land was occupied by a state
research body, the Bucharest Plant Protection Research and Development Institute.
(20:15):
Its director, an elderly man named Horria Iliescue, feared the
institute would be shut down if the land was signed
over Under the obscure regulation involved, Iliescue's refusal would have
been enough to block the deal. Wooing him took some time. Then,
early one morning in September two thousand and eight, Treca
(20:38):
noticed he had missed numerous calls. The businessman had invited
Iliescu to take a cruise on his yacht in Monte
Carlo during an upcoming trip to the south of France.
Good morning, Treeca said. When he called back, I apologize.
I was playing tennis. I called several times, because this
is what I call being polite, Iliescu replied. The director,
(21:02):
seemingly nervous and bumbling, launched into a rambling explanation of
telephone Ettiger. Despite having spent months refusing to countenance to transfer,
Iliescu was now eagerly looking forward to his trip with Trica,
he wanted to confirm the details of his hotel in France.
Not long afterwards, Iliescue got on a flight from Bucharest
(21:24):
de Nie, where he was picked up in a Mercedes
Vito Van by Treeca's driver and taken to Monaco. Once there,
he and Treca had lunch and sailed on Treca's yacht.
Exactly what happened on the boat is unclear, but after
returning to Romania, Iliescu appears to have undergone a complete
(21:44):
change of opinion about signing over Vanessa Royal Farm. Iliescu
died of natural causes not long afterwards. Treca denies that
he paid for Iliescu's trip to France.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Paul meanwhile, was enjoying the lifestyle of a true prince.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Flushed with his recipliar allowance, he and Leah hired a
chauffeur to.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Shuttle them around Boukarest.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Two people who knew him around this time said Paul
had also started to frequent exclusive private members clubs in London,
such as five Hartford Street and Mayfair. There was something though,
that money couldn't fix the indignity of being called Lambrino.
At one point, Paul had traveled to a public records
office in Central Book Arrest in search of his father's
(22:32):
birth certificate.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Accompanied by his.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Lawyer, Paul marched in and asked to see the document.
The line that should have affirmed paternity was there, just
as blank as he'd been told. In small letters, he
wrote in the name King carolcond this little act of
defiance hadn't changed anything, but winning Vanessa would. That would
(22:56):
put Project Prints on the path to reclaiming Paul's share.
In September two thousand and eight, the ord of the
Research Institute voted to allow the return of the land.
The following January, Vanessa Royal Farm was officially transferred to Reciplia.
(23:20):
The feeling of triumph didn't last. Some members of Project
Prince were becoming suspicious of one another. Some worried that
Treeca was skimming money from the operation, something he strongly denied.
Paul also started to wonder if something was off. Rather
than selling Vanessa and distributing the prophets, Reciplia told him
(23:40):
it wanted to develop the land instead delaying his payout.
Paul and Leah complained to Silberstein, the political consultant. He
was busy trying to keep the couple plicated by getting
them favorable coverage in the Romanian press. In October twenty eleven,
Silberstein rang up a friendly journalist, Listen, you have to
(24:01):
help more with the princess, he said. The fact that
she's nagging, it's not helpful for the project, you know.
Paul started to notice people following him and his wife
around Bukarest. Then he began to suspect that Reciplia had
ex Mossad officers on its payroll. They, he said, told
(24:21):
us on one point they were there to make us
feel safe, but they were there to find out our weaknesses,
he said. Steinmetz denied employing any former intelligence officers during
Project Prince, calling it a blatant lie and another deceitful
rumor aimed at conveying false impressions to keep.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
A lid on things.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Silberstein decided to reveal who was really behind Project Prince.
He rang, Leah, Okay, I want to do something, he said.
I want to bring someone you've never met before with me,
someone who's invested everything in the company. It's mister Steinmetz.
He came to Romania on a special occasion that evening.
(25:04):
Paul and Leah met with Steinmetz at their lawyer's book
Arest office. Paul recollected telling the Israeli about his concerns.
We don't get what's happening. We don't know what's going on,
he said. Paul remembered Steinmetz's calming the couple's worries. Steinmetz
disputed this account of the meeting, saying it was a
courtesy visit of maybe two, three or four minutes.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
A few weeks.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Later, Silberstein was dismayed to find the meeting had not
had the intended effect the Prince an alarm, Silberstein told
his friend over the phone, had started a war with us.
Convinced he was being conned, Paul was threatening to report
Silberstein and the rest of the team to the police.
(25:50):
Can you imagine Silberstein raised down the phone after working
five and a half years for these people, helping them everywhere,
paying five million in cash on their behalf. When I
met them, they were completely broke. Completely. Everything you see
is our money project. Prince Silberstein worried was falling apart.
(26:12):
He had no idea how right he was. Laura Kadruta
Caves didn't look like the person Romania's matro politicians and
gangster's most feared. In her early forties, with jet black
hair cut into an anna winter bob, she often wore
pink lipstick. Caves had been Romania's youngest ever prosecutor general.
(26:36):
Then in twenty thirteen, she was appointed to lead a
new anti graft office called the National Anti Corruption Directorate.
Her mandate was to route out high level crimes in
one of the EU's most corrupt countries, and she moved fast.
In her first two years on the job, Cavesy indicted
fourteen current or former members of Parliament, four government ministers,
(27:00):
the mayor of Bucharest, and stunning the country the prime minister.
It was lonely work. Cavesy, who'd grown up in a
small Transylvanian town, was known to say she didn't have friends,
just acquaintances. She often walked alone around Bucharest, watched over
by state security agents. The Prime minister, who her investigation
(27:24):
had forced out of office, claimed that she was trying
to make a name by inventing and imagining facts that
Kavasi believed she was fighting for the soul of her country.
For the first time in Romania's modern history, the powerful
were being held to account.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Kavesi is currently serving as the EU's first Chief Prosecutor.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
They didn't know it, but Kvasi had the members of
Project Prints in her sites. Recording devices had been installed
in Paul and Leah's home, as well as on the
phone lines of every other member of the Project. Agents
with Romania's intelligence service, the SRI were following their every move,
having come to believe the Project Prince entered a national
(28:10):
security threat. The spies had shown Cavesy what they deemed
proof of a criminal plot by foreigners to defraud the state.
In late twenty fifteen, Cavesy appeared on national television to
announce a sweeping new indictment. Prince Paul, Treaca, Steinmetz Silberstein
and others, she said, had been charged with establishing a
(28:33):
criminal group to bribe and corrupt public officials, all of
it in what she said were bogus inheritance claims. The
damages the group had inflicted on the state from reclaiming
Vanessa and the other land exceeded one hundred million euros.
It was an enormous amount, Cavesi said on air. It
(28:53):
would be the equivalent of the allowance that approximately one
million children in Romania could receive for one year.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
She said.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Paul, who come to reclaim his lost homeland, was about
to become one of its most wanted fugitives. Part two, Runaway.
It was five thirty am on a Sunday in December
(29:22):
twenty twenty when men arrived at Paul and Leah's door
in book Arest. Leah was awoken by the buzzer and
the sound of voices on the other side of the intercom.
Five policemen were outside, and they were looking for Paul.
She opened the front gate and asked to see some identification.
(29:43):
They began to rush from room to room, searching under
beds and inside The couple's walking safe but her husband
wasn't there. Leah knew she had to warn him. Cavasi
had been pursuing the members of Project Prints for a while.
Leah picked up a phone, suspecting that every line in
the house was Wiatt hated darling. She said when she
(30:06):
got through to Paul, stay calm. There's this huge, huge confusion.
You cannot leave for Romania. They will arrest you. I
can't give you any more information, but please please get
a lawyer. Then she hung up on the other end
of the line.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Paul was stunned.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
He put the phone down and sat alone in his
Lisbon hotel room, grappling with the fact that he was
now an international fugitive. If he stayed in Portugal, he
would probably be arrested and eventually sent back to Romania.
So Prince Paul, direct descendant of Queen Victoria of England
(30:47):
and Czar Alexander the Second of Russia, decided to Lamin. First,
he had to get out of Portugal as fast as possible.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
The airport was too risky.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Paul went to an ATM and took out several thousand euros,
stuffing them in his pocket. Whatever came next, credit cards
would leave a trail. Paul hailed a taxi and asked
the driver would you be okay to go to Madrid.
The six hour trip across an international border wasn't exactly
a normal fare, but the bemused Cabby checked his schedule
(31:21):
and agreed. As they sped off, Paul ran through his options.
He couldn't book a hotel using his real name. Where
could he go.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
He knew some.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
People he trusted in Naples, but getting there required crossing
from Spain to France and then into Italy. Without attracting attention.
He feared the Romanian arrest warrant could already have been
sent to every European police force. If so, every border
was a potential trap. Once his taxi arrived in Madrid,
(31:54):
Paul got out, handed the driver five hundred duas in
cash and hailed another cap. The switch might throw off
anyone following, he thought. Soon he was headed to Monte Carlo,
a day long drive. As the hours passed in the
back of the taxi, Paul thought about Lea, When would
he be able to see her again. He thought about Romania,
(32:18):
the homeland he'd spent his life dreaming about and was
now trying to put him in prison. And he thought
of his grandfather, King Carol, who had fled across Europe.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Eighty years earlier.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
About an hour outside Monaco, Paul saw what he was
dreading a police checkpoint. It was too late to turn around,
so the taxi pulled over and a French officer instructed
Paul to hand over his papers. He gave his British passport,
hoping that the arrest warrant was issued on his Romanian documents.
(32:51):
Where are you going, the policeman asked, sheepishly, Paul said
he was on his way to Italy. You're going to
Italy by taxi. Paul's heart was pounding as he confirmed
he was. The police officer walked away with the documents.
While Paul waited. All he could do was silently reassure himself,
(33:14):
at least in France, better to be arrested here than
in Romania. The police officer returned to the taxi slowly.
Then he handed over the passport and waved them on.
As Paul snaked down the Mediterranean coast towards Naples. The
(33:35):
other members of Project Prints were in total disarray. After
several years battling Covesi's chargers, some of them had been
convicted and sentenced to prison in a country with some
of the most notoriously brutal jails in Europe. Into polar
rest warrants had been issued for Paul as well as
Steinmetz and Silberstein had been sentenced to five years in
(33:57):
prison each. Steinmetz was in Dubai at the time, out
of reach, but Treeca was already in a Romanian jail
serving a seven year sentence. Even Rosu, the high powered lawyer,
had been convicted. Treeca told me that he had only
ever acted legally during his work on Project Prints, and
that the conviction was unjust, and that there were serious
(34:20):
problems and errors with the evidence that was used against him,
including the use of wire taps gathered by Romania's secret
intelligence service. Treeca also alleged that an unnamed Romanian prosecutor
threatened him to gather evidence against other members of the team.
The prosecutor told me that he knows I am innocent,
but that he will go ahead with the case if
(34:41):
I do not accept to make allegations against certain persons
of interest to him, Treaca said. Silberstein declined to comment
in book Arest. Leah had no way of contacting her
husband or even knowing where he was. Then a coded
message came through passed from Paul via a lawyer, reading
(35:02):
I am in the place where I was a child.
She was overcome with relief, realizing that Paul was in France.
He traveled all the way across Europe in taxis to Naples,
only to decide he would be safest in the country
of his birth.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
After all, he was hiding in a village.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Leah was still stuck in Romania, being hounded by the
police about his whereabouts, she said. The authorities told her
that she would be liable for the costs of pursuing
her fugitive husband for as much as nine million euros.
The house she owned with Paul was later repossessed by
the bank to be sold for the value of the mortgage.
Then men arrived to take the furniture, but Leah vowed
(35:46):
to do whatever she could. They didn't understand that even
though it was blessed to be born an educated part
of my life in America, I've also got a stronger backbone,
she told me. I'm not able to be broken. Project
Prince was not the only one of Benny Steinmetz's high risk,
high reward deals going bad. In fact, his legal problems
(36:10):
around the world seemed to be spiraling out of control.
Several years before the Romanian indictment, a former employee of
Steinmetz's who had worked on the Guinea mining deal, was
arrested by the FBI. Federal agents had secretly recorded him
plotting to destroy evidence suggesting millions of dollars in bribes
had been paid by Steinmetz's company to one of the
(36:33):
ex wives of Guinea's former dictator. The Guinean government then
accused Steinmetz's bribery and said it would strip the rights
to the mine from his company and Valet, the Brazilian miner.
The US probe into the Guinea deal hadn't implicated Steinmetz directly,
but he had been charged by a Swiss court for
bribery relating to the deal. He appeared to sink under
(36:56):
the weight of a growing number of civil and criminal
cases brought against him. In twenty eighteen, Steinmetz's holding company
put itself into voluntary administration to try and protect its
assets from further legal claims. Then Varlet accused Steinmetz of
deliberately misleading it into a deal he knew was tainted
by corruption. Varlet launched a claim for billions and damages
(37:20):
in courts in London and New York. By December twenty
twenty one, a year after the police arrived at Paul
and Leah's door, Steinmetz had been arrested in Greece on
a European arrest warrant issued by Romania and barred from
leaving the country before an extradition hearing in Romania. Someone
had been trying to hit back. Shortly after Cavesy appeared
(37:44):
on national television to announce the Project Prince Indictment. An
ex colleague contacted her about a strange experience. The colleague
had been approached by a recruitment agency based in the
UK about a lucrative job, but when she went for
an interview, they only seemed to be interested in asking
about working with Cavesy. Then someone using a British number
(38:07):
rang up Cavasi's elderly farm at home, claiming they were
organizing a conference in London they wanted to pay him
to attend. Her father, who didn't speak English, was suspicious
and told his daughter. More members of her family were
approached by odd sounding outfits, seemingly using job offers as
a pretext to gather information about Kvasi. In March twenty sixteen,
(38:44):
two athletic young men, one with a Belgian passport and
the other an Israeli national, flew into Bucharest's Henry Cowander airport.
One had reddish brown hair and a beard, and was
wearing blue jeans, white sneakers and a black jacket. The
other was dressed all in black apart from a white shirt.
(39:04):
They checked into a hotel downtown and got to work
soon and Kevesi began to get security alerts on her
official and personal email accounts, suggesting someone as trying to
hack her. The two men were undercover agents dispatched in
Romania as part of an espionage operation targeting Cavesy called
(39:26):
Project Tornado. They weren't spies working for a government. They
were from the Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube, founded
in twenty ten. Black Cube advertises itself as being made
up of a select group of veterans from Israeli elite
intelligence units. The company became internationally notorious for its work
(39:49):
on behalf of convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein during his
attempts to stifle investigations into his crimes. Steinmetz has been
one of Black Cube's most important clients. He used undercover
agents from the firm to secretly record executives from Varlas,
admitting that they were aware the Guinea deal they were
suing him over had been.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Corrupt from the start.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
As a result, Varley eventually withdrew its legal claim against Steinmetz.
On its website, Black Cube cites its work for Steinmetz,
which involved a team of twenty agents, as one of
its most successful cases. Unfortunately, for the two Black Cube agents.
The Romanian security services had become aware of their presence
and they were soon arrested. They were later released with
(40:35):
suspended sentences. What never became clear was who the client
behind the operation to dig up dirt on Kovesi was.
Steinmetz was one of several people suspected and investigated by
the Romanian police's organized crime unit, but the case was
later closed due to a lack of evidence. Steinmetz denies
(40:57):
having any role in Black Cube's work in Romania and
said he had only ever employed the company once. He
called the suspicions raised against him a clear slander by
the Romanian authority to justify the prosecution against me, which
was clearly politically motivated. When Black Cube CEO Dan Zarella
(41:18):
was interviewed by Romanian police, he gave a puzzling explanation
as to why his firm had taken on the Caves operation.
According to a transcript obtained by Haretz, the Israeli newspaper,
Zarella said the company was hired by a former Romanian
intelligence officer who claimed that the work they would carry
out was on behalf of the SRI, the country's spy agency.
(41:41):
Black Cube later said it was hired by a senior
official in Romania and fully cooperated with the Romanian authorities
to solve this matter. In France, Paul had eventually reported
himself to the authorities and defeated a first request by
Romania to bring him back to serve out his sentence.
By April twenty twenty four, Lea had joined him. Emboldened
(42:04):
by his victory, Paul decided to accept an invitation from
an order of the Knights of Malta to visit the
Mediterranean island. His lawyers warned him he was taking a
huge risk, but Paul was certain the Romanian government wouldn't
try and have him arrested. He flew to Valetta with
Leah and Pastory immigration without a problem. On their third
(42:27):
day on the island, three Martes policemen approached Paul and
arrested him on the orders of the Romanian state. Leah
watched as her husband was taken away. By that evening,
Paul was in Corodino Prison, a penitentiary built in the
nineteenth century under British colonial rule. It was a shock,
he said, you go from being in a five star
(42:49):
hotel to being in prison. Paul knew the Romanian state
would press as hard as possible to have him extradited. Rosu,
the lawyer convicted for his work on Project Prince, had
been jailed in conditions he described as a metal cage.
He was later acquitted and released. In Malta, Paul was
(43:10):
placed in a section of the jail reserved for high
profile inmates. One was a computer hacker awaiting extradition to
the US. Another was the Maltese businessman on trial for
the murder of the journalist Daphne Caroana Galitzia. During his
first days, Paul tried to stay calm, like a good
sovereign and make conversation with the other prisoners. None of
(43:34):
them seemed to find the presence of a fugitive prints
on their block particularly remarkable. In the mornings, the prisoners
played football in the courtyard. Sometimes Paul would watch cable television,
mostly CNN, but this was difficult as he wasn't allowed
his metal rimmed glasses in prison, they were deemed a
security threat. Most days they were served fried food, which
(43:56):
Paul described as like KFC. He looked forward to thursdays,
when the inmates were given roast lamb to keep his
mind occupied. He read the firm by John Grisham and
bonded with a dutch Man accused of international cocaine trafficking.
He wasn't too bad, I suppose, Paul told me. He
took two or three showers a day. Two months passed
(44:21):
as Paul's lawyers worked to have him released on bail.
Finally the Maltese authorities agreed. The other inmates applauded as
Prince Paul walked out of the iron gates of the prison.
He felt triumphant, even though he knew there was another
painful way ahead of him, this time to see if
Maltese judges would side with him or the Romanian state.
(44:44):
And the first time I met Paul was in early
August twenty twenty four. We were inside Malta's courts of Justice,
where I just watched as a judge read out a
lengthy administrative procedure in Maltese. This resulted in another uncertainty
laced delay. Paul was under strict bail conditions, reporting to
(45:05):
the police twice a day. His passport had been temporarily confiscated.
The next morning we met again at a local hotel.
Lea and Paul's lawyers were present this time. Paul told
me he was holding up well and he was relieved
to be with his family, but he was noticeably shaken.
At times, he was energized and defiant. At others his
(45:28):
voice became weary. In court, Paul's Maltese lawyer, Jason as
a Party, argued that Romania's prisons were so overcrowded and
dilapidated that it would be an abuse of his client's
human rights to keep him there. During the hearings, the
Romanian government sent four officials to Malta to put ford
its case for extra lighting Paul. It's quite abnormal. As
(45:51):
a Party told me, I do not recall any case
where the representatives of the foreign government came over to testify.
Sitting with him, it was clear that Paul was exhausted.
He'd fought his entire life to be accepted, yet here
he was facing disgrace and years behind bars, not as
Prince Paul of Romania, but as Paul Lambrino Krook. As
(46:17):
Paul waited to learn his fate, I traveled to Athens
to meet Steinmetz. Thanks to his project Prince Conviction, Greece
is one of only three European countries the billionaire can
travel to without fearing arrest. The Israeli had beaten an
attempt by the Romanian state to extradite him after he
was briefly arrested in Athens back in twenty twenty one.
(46:38):
We met on a warm summer evening on the terrace
of a taverna not far from Syntagma Square. It was
the middle of August and the restaurant was nearly deserted. Later,
he told me that he never did anything illegal in
Romania and was never aware of any of his partners
paying bribes. It was a pure business, he told me.
(47:00):
Steinmetz's heavily accented English is delivered in the near whisper
of a man accustomed to those around him falling silent
when he talks. We do hundreds of deals in different sectors,
and what we saw was a good financial opportunity. The
Romanian conviction, Steinmetz told me, was politically motivated by local
(47:21):
officials who didn't want to see a foreigner succeed. It
was all fixed in advance, he said. It was a
rigged game, calling the conviction against him a joke, a
Romanian joke. In Switzerland, Steinmetz has been convicted for bribery
in one of Africa's poorest countries. He is appealing, but
(47:44):
the chances of him serving a prison sentence are slim.
The Guineaan state has since settled its claims against his company.
Steinmetz told me he was unfazed by the fact that
Romania's European arrest warrant for him is still outstanding. What
do I need to worry about to worry about something
I haven't done? Because I can't fly to Europe, I
(48:06):
can fly to the rest of the world. I can
do whatever I want. As I left, I was alarmed
by the thought that perhaps he was right. Judges across
Europe have independently cast serious doubts about Romania's case against
the Project Prince Crew, with Greece, Cyprus, Malta and France
(48:30):
all independently rejecting attempts by Romania to extradite Steinmetz and Paul.
Interpol later ruled to delete the warrants against them, deciding,
according to a ruling scene by the FT, that the
use of secret service wiretapping was deemed contrary to fair
trial standards. The ruling also said there were serious concerns
(48:51):
regarding the existence of political elements in the Romanian criminal
case against them. Late last summer, paulsted in a Martese
court for the last time, as it was announced that
Romania's attempts to extradite him had been rejected. He was
free to return to France, and Lea was joyed to
be going back to Paris. What was that film? If
(49:13):
it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium. Tomorrow we'll stay with
my husband's dear friend who has a castle in France.
From a dungeon to a castle and one day, how
many people from the Midwest can say that? Weeks later
I learned that Paul had managed to track down several
of the missing paintings spirited out of Romania in the
(49:34):
nineteen forties. Based on Paul's legal claims, a French judge
has frozen the transfer of two El Greco's, opening up
the possibility that, after three decades, he might finally receive
some small piece of his inheritance. During one of our
last conversations, I asked him whether, after all the setbacks,
(49:56):
the arrest, warrants, the fleeing and jail, he ever regretted
having returned to Romania. I'm from birth from conception, the
grandson of King Carol. He said, I respect Romania's republic,
but I am really the rightful Crown Prince. The Fugitive
(50:27):
Prince was written by me Myles Johnson and edited by
Matt Veller. It was produced by Misha Frankel Duval and
Laura Clarke. Mix and sound design were by Breen Turner.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
RYL. Brumley is the FT's global head of Audio.
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