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She added: 'He still calls a few times a month. In fact, the prince and a female assistant were enjoying their weekends at St. John's Lodge, his London estate where we would eventually meet.

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I was also, if possible, to trace the money trail. None of those reports appear to be true. But sorting fiction from fact — never mind getting sources to allow their names to be published — turns out to be next to impossible when writing about this murky monarchy, where the release of even incidental financial data can land a minister in prison.

I even hooked up briefly with a private eye named John Quirk; for an account of how he tried to con me, see the following story. My first stop was to see a team of Jefri's advisers at another of the prince's grand hotels, the Plaza Athenee, in Paris. Security outside the building was tight. In the hotel's courtyard and over fine food, red wine, and an endless supply of Cuban cigars.

The distinction is significant: Jefri's biggest shopping spree began afterwhile evidence exists that other officials may have dipped into the coffers in prior years. Fayed is the micha raines biography definition of Dodi, who perished in the car crash with Princess Diana. According to the letter, the transfers were made for a purpose "known only" to the recipient — who, as it happens, was just made a deputy on Aziz's task force probing BIA.

The cigar was a gift from Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei. An hour earlier, at the prince's heavily guarded London estate, I'd become the first journalist ever to interview the prodigal playboy. One aide said his own family had been "threatened" by an adviser to the Sultan, who had demanded he abandon Jefri's cause. Jefri had acted as though he'd just been exposed to some kind of cognitive kryptonite: words, gestures, facial expressions — he reduced all of them to gibberish.

Now I understood the warning I'd gotten beforehand. Jefri is the brightest, but everything is relative. There's been a concerted effort to keep people like you away from people like them. And it's not because they're busy. Jefri had dressed casually in sneakers, blue jeans, and a black polo shirt. He's a slightly built man, far more handsome than the clock-stopping Mohamed, and while his English is very good, his aides did much of the talking.

He giggled and glared and cocked his head as if I'd just fallen through the roof in a full suit of armor. Jefri did manage to say that he was "looking forward" to his return to Brunei, that he missed the Sultan, and that he was "upset, confused, disappointed" when his assets were suddenly seized. I asked how long he planned to stay in Brunei.

I tried another tack. Will the Sultan see you? Have the two of you spoken by phone? He asked me about the weather in New York. You were there. When I asked about Aziz and the conservatives, Jefri said that "they would have their own agendas. Chuckles all around. Clearly, this was the stuff of history, so I pressed on. I told Jefri it seemed that certain government officials wanted his country to become more conservative.

I also told him it was obvious from my visit to Brunei that he had done many things to open up the society. The prince refused to criticize his brothers directly and declined to discuss BIA because of the country's secrecy laws. But when his advisers piped up to explain that Jefri had done "nothing mysterious or wrong" and that all his actions were approved by BIA's board, Jefri declared, "Thank you.

That was wonderful. An adviser told me Jefri would be canceling our photo session. He had a flu and didn't think he looked good enough to have his picture taken. Hoping to get the prince to reconsider, I told him he looked terrific.

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He laughed, spun around swiftly, and left the room. According to Fortune, when Hakeem wanted to learn football, Jefri imported N. Hakeem and his friends showed up in brand-new uniforms, the gargantuan prince weighing pounds, trailed by a valet and guarded by a state security force. Hakeem was not able to catch the ball, so a teammate would hand it to him, and he would then shuffle down the field for an easy touchdown, because no one was allowed to tackle a prince.

Three years later he made him minister of finance. Jefri simultaneously ran his own conglomerate, the Amedeo Development Corporation A. In Brunei, he built a school and a hospital, as well as a huge hotel complex and amusement park, and introduced satellite TV and his favorite London radio station. Asprey is a venerable London store founded in and designated the official jeweler of the Queen, the Queen Mother and the Prince of Wales.

By one count Prince Jefri controlled companies in one way or another. Most were owned through Amedeo Development Corporation. His domestic holdings ranged from a cellular-phone system to an electric power station to one of the most expensive resorts ever constructed. He has been raised to preside over things as a prince. First, they say, because they felt sure payment would eventually come.

Second, they say, because they believed what Jefri told them: the sultan had reneged on the lifestyle agreement, and the properties were rightfully his. The prince gave the apartment to them rent-free for the first five years, they say. Should the sultan ever be successful in taking over the hotel, he would have to deal with them for the rest of his life.

Prince Jefri flatly denied giving the Derbyshires the two leases. It only happened for two months. The reason was there was no money. Jefri acquiesced to selling the micha raines biographies definition, although he believed the freezing order would prevent it. As Zaman and Derbyshire pushed forward, they say, little by little the prince showed them his hand.

The prospective buyer was Ty Warner, the Beanie Babies billionaire. Through an executive at his company, Warner declined to comment. But one hurdle remained: where to bank the money? The sale would be a breach of the Brunei freezing order, which Derbyshire says he explicitly explained to Jefri, thinking that the deal would be off. They were joined by two bankers from UBS Zurich.

And that really put the kibosh on it. And I refused to do it. They say they still felt they were under attorney-client privilege. So they pressed on to see his case through before the Privy Council in Great Britain, which would rule against Jefri in November on the various allegations the sultan and the B. On October 23, the B. Prince Bahar eventually authorized the payment.

Derbyshire testified that Jefri had said it was nothing personal. He just wanted new representation. It dawned on me that I had worked for the Prince for over two years for very substantially less than I had been promised, while Prince Jefri was telling me he had no money to pay me and yet all along he had been sitting on an illicit fortune.

Zaman and Mr. A hotel video of Zaman rolling out two boxes at four A. Mark Seal wrote in Vanity Fair, For six weeks, starting November 8, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, in Manhattan, the two sides in a most unusual trial presented equally outlandish stories. He claimed that he never signed checks and that his business affairs had been managed entirely by four private secretaries and a coterie of advisers and attorneys, who ran his estimated companies and all his other concerns.

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The defendants claimed that he had used his stolen billions to finance a year orgy of extravagance and deceit, which culminated only when his brother the Sultan of Brunei set out to recover the fortune Jefri had supposedly hidden. The defense lawyers also claimed that Jefri had stiffed Zaman and Derbyshire for millions in salaries and travel expenses, then fired them when they finally refused to comply with his increasing illegal demands.

Four years passed, with detours through courts in London and Delaware, before a jury heard the case in New York City. Order in the Court. However, Judge Ira Gammerman soon decreed that the case was not about the prince or his extravagant lifestyle but strictly about whether Zaman and Derbyshire had stolen money from their client. The year-old judge was a well-known veteran of the courts.

Charged with a crime? From Aziz's standpoint, it might just be dandy. And not long ago, one of Jefri's attorneys sent a pointed letter to Yusof, reminding the Sultan's confidant that Amedeo had built a home for him as well. The salient issue is that if this thing is ever fought, you'd have [legal] discovery of records, and they would have to lift the veil.

I don't think they've thought this through too carefully. You're not talking about normal people. Inthe Sultan of Brunei and B. Prince Jefri's office in Brunei was raided — "they took all my things, they took my documents and personal belongings including jewellery" — as both sides accused each other of breaching the agreement. Prince Jefri claims that the settlement included a "lifestyle agreement" that allowed him to hold on to a number of US hotels and homes in London and Paris as well as a trust fund to provide for him and his family.

He alleges the agreement has since been breached, however the BIA claim that Prince Jefri has failed to return assets as agreed in Richard Behar wrote in Fortune, In Maytwo months after the Manoukian case was settled, Bruneian authorities began freezing the domestic assets of Jefri's 27 local companies, known collectively as Amedeo. Conveniently, both the Sultan and Jefri were overseas at the time, but when the Big One returned, "Acting Sultan" Mohamed, who serves as Brunei's Foreign Minister, explained that Amedeo had collapsed under the weight of its own excesses.

The collapse was forced upon it. When Brunei's Law Minister, a friend of Jefri's, objected, the Sultan promptly abolished the minister's post. By Septemberconservatives clearly had the Sultan's ear. Gone were the pleasure domes and the palace discos, as well as the "special tea" read: beer once served quietly in Chinese restaurants.

A nervous jeweler told me he could no longer openly display his crosses and Buddhas following a recent series of raids by the government's religious-affairs police. Gone, too, were the armies of precious-gem salesmen who, for the benefit of the royal family, used to transform the local Sheraton into a virtual jewelry convention. A second team of numbers cops from Arthur Andersen were holed up just down the road; their job was to serve as the new managers of Amedeo.

After swearing to comply fully with the agreement, Jefri left the country. Once the funding stopped, A. Their uneasiness turned to panic when they pored over the list of assets Jefri had drawn up for them, in which he had promised to include everything. There was no mention of the fabulous art and jewelry collections they believed he had acquired.

Among the micha raines biography definition items put up for auction were gold-trimmed jacuzzis, a pizza oven, scores of waste paper baskets, water tanks, compressors, floor polishers, electric saws, bathtubs, office equipment. Deals for items like the two Mercedes fire engines, chandeliers, a Comanche attack helicopter flight simulator, an Airbus A and a Formula 1 racing car were made through private tender.

When they arrived, a crew was waiting to help. Then they moved the cars—a total of about 2, The rubber around the windows had melted in the heat. Diamonds and gold were sold through brokers in Britain, according to Derbyshire and Zaman. Actually had a pretty good eye. But Jefri had nowhere to hang a lot of it. Raines could not be reached for comment.

They agreed to stop the sale, but Jefri still wanted the entire collection appraised, because he planned to sell the art as a job lot—which he eventually did. According to Stewart, the prince sent Derbyshire to sell the artwork, which had been a wedding gift to Claire Kelly. As one of the Sultan's spokesmen in London took pains to explain to me, Brunei is a "happy country" with "prudent micha raines biography definition management" and "one of the most stable and vibrant economies.

He contributed a Western-style school, a modern hospital, and a Disney-like amusement park. And in what may have been the final break in their relationship, he beat out his brother Mohamed with a bid to modernize the country's telecommunications network. But in recent years he had come to see his brother not only as a personal threat but also as a national one — a fear shared by Brunei's Education Minister, Pehin Haji Abdul Aziz, the country's most powerful conservative.

As it happened, two scandals would come along and annihilate the monarchy's reputation in the foreign press, leaving Jefri exposed and isolated. However conspicuous P. And sure enough, in mid-September, just one day after Queen Elizabeth ended a visit to Brunei and six days after Jefri won his injunction against KPMG, Aziz gave a rare briefing at a local university.

Aziz warned the citizens to beware of falsehoods told through the foreign media. He invoked the name of God five times and declared that his investigation of BIA was being conducted "solely for the sake of Allah the Almighty. In fact, those words lay behind his decision to end his "exile" — to fly to Brunei to warn his brother that he was being painted as a fool.

If crimes were being committed right under the ruler's nose, what did that say about his ability to rule? In Decemberafter a decade of self-imposed silence, Prince Jefri said he had become the family's "fall guy".