Whipping Boy (15 page)

The Baron Moncrieffe, vice chairman of the Badische Trust Consortium.

To counteract the burdens of old age (and, quite possibly, the weight of the decorations), Prince Robert relied on an intricately carved gold-handled walking stick to remain upright as he made his way across the room.

As the prince shuffled forward, Colonel Sherry directed Cesar and his clients to the distant side of a long gilded table. The Badische executives arranged themselves on the near side.

“What was Cesar doing while all this was taking place?” I ask.

“Nothing. He was the lure. I was the fish. He had brought me to the shark tank. At that point, his job was pretty much done.”

The news disappoints me. I so wanted him to be the mastermind behind the whole operation. I keep the unfulfilled hopes to myself and let Laurence continue to describe the scheme.

“Everyone remained standing until Winky sat down in this ornate chair set up at one end of the table.”

“Winky?”

“Sorry. That’s what I called the prince. Because of the monocle.”

I chuckle.

“Yeah, I suppose it does sound funny when I tell it now. But it wasn’t funny while I was living through it.”

“I’m sure.”

Once seated, Prince Robert asked the colonel to present a brief overview of the investment strategy governing the charitable trust bearing his family name. The colonel dutifully explained that the House of Badische, also known as the Trust, was a 150-year-old bank founded in Baden, Germany, and now based in Switzerland. It managed some $60 billion in assets that were invested in a wide range of sophisticated financial instruments: “structured finance, collateral guaranties, nonrecourse loans.” Sherry corroborated the claim by handing Laurence a one-page document titled “Transaction Experience” that listed some dozen Badische deals. The largest, a railroad contract connected to the Bechtel Corporation, had a stated value of €3.7 billion. Smaller transactions included a €29 million “supertanker sale” and €10 million in “French film financing.”

The colonel noted that the Trust’s “scope of interests” extended far beyond the itemized list. “At one point he said that the Badische’s timber holdings included all the trees in the Black Forest and that the Trust could easily finance my start-up ten times over.”

“How did you react?”

“I asked the colonel the same question I asked Cesar: ‘Where do you get your money?’”

“What did the colonel say?”

“He told us most of the Trust’s assets originated in Africa and Saudi Arabia and that a smaller percentage came from Europe. That’s when the duke chimed in that the Trust handled
all
of his funds, as well as the investments of his wife, Michaela von Habsburg, the archduchess of Austria.”

After Sherry gave his brief overview, it was Laurence’s turn to perform.

“I began my presentation with a broad analysis of the Latino television market, then bullet-pointed my way through the specifics of the Cuchifritos business plan.”

Asked by the Trust’s in-house counsel, a man named Richard Zeif, about her professional qualifications, Laurence informed the gathering that she had previously served as the president of a home shopping network with 159 full-time employees. Asked about the name of the new venture, Laurence said, “Cuchifritos is a cute Hispanic term for a small fried food.”

A summary of Badische business ventures presented to potential borrowers.

H.R.H. Prince Robert von Badische, Seventy-fourth Grand Master of the Knights of Malta and Chairman of the Badische Trust Consortium.

“I fielded softballs for a half hour before Winky wrapped up the meeting by saying, ‘Let’s have cake.’ And the next thing I know we’re sharing a loveseat, eating room-service pastries, and leafing through a scrapbook.”

“Containing . . . ?”

“Yellowed newspaper clippings. Old black-and-white photos. Pictures documenting the prince’s charitable work. Images of flood victims. Photo ops with celebrities. There was one picture of Anthony Quinn wearing a robe. There was another with Steven Seagal wearing a similar robe. There was an article from a Palm Springs paper about the prince walking his Maltese dogs. There was a picture of Dr.
Moncrieffe with the Queen Mum. There was even one of Winky with the pope. It was pretty impressive.”

Colonel Sherry eventually approached the pair and informed his boss that other loan candidates were waiting for an audience. “Basically, my time was up.”

“At that point, what did Cesar do?”

“He escorted me and my team out of the suite and said, ‘I’ll be in touch if you’ve presented an acceptable deal and if the Trust deigns to fund your venture.’ I don’t know if that’s the exact word he used—
deigns
—but that was his general tone. Badische were royals, and I was a commoner.”

A few days later, Cesar stoked Laurence’s hopes by requesting her “bona fide financials.” If the documents she provided checked out, contracts could be drawn up and a signing ceremony could be scheduled. Almost as an afterthought, Cesar noted that in order to receive funding, Laurence would be required to establish a small number of offshore bank accounts through which the loan would flow.

“Why was that necessary?” I ask.

“Cesar said it was to preserve the anonymity of the people whose assets Badische managed.”

“Did that shock you?”

“No, not really. American companies regularly do that kind of thing. What
did
surprise me was the price tag. Cesar told me Barclays charged a flat fee of $9,000 per offshore account, and that my deal would require six such entities.”

“So $54,000?”

“Correct. I said I’d like to use my own lawyer. That I could get the accounts set up a lot more cheaply.” Her counterproposal was summarily rejected. “Sherry called me and said the involvement of outside attorneys at this stage would be looked upon in a very disfavorable manner.” Badische would be “gratified and pleased” if Cesar’s firm handled the preliminary paperwork. Laurence would be
allowed, indeed
expected,
to bring legal representation to the final contract negotiations and signing.

“That didn’t make me happy. I knew Cesar was gouging me. But I wasn’t about to jeopardize the deal just to save a few thousand dollars.”

Laurence supplied the requested documents and half the $54,000 fee. Cesar immediately called and inquired about the remainder. “He was very upset. I could hear the desperation in his voice, though I didn’t think much of it at the time.”

Laurence explained she needed a few days to shift funds before she could wire the outstanding balance. That precipitated another call from the colonel. “He was very imperious. He told me I was taking advantage of both Badische and Barclays.” The rebuke rattled Laurence. Within forty-eight hours, she transferred the second half of the fee. Ruffled feathers smoothed, Cesar set up six accounts in the British Virgin Islands tax haven of Tortola, and informed Laurence that the loan closing would take place in Zurich on June 17.

“I was thrilled. Despite the payment hiccup, everything was on track.” And it remained so until a few days before the scheduled signing, when, without warning, Laurence’s maternal grandmother passed away. The funeral services conflicted with the meetings in Zurich. Laurence called Cesar and requested a postponement. “He said, ‘Too late. Everyone is already in transit.’”

Laurence asked her mother what to do. “My mother told me, Grandmom Rose would have wanted you to go. Grandmom Rose would have said, ‘Go and be successful.’ So I left my family to meet up with Cesar in Switzerland.”

To meet up with Cesar in Switzerland.

For obvious reasons, the phrase resonates. So does the helplessness
Laurence invokes. I find myself making all sorts of connections between her narrative of alpine humiliation and my own.

Some parallels are more consequential than others. At one point I find myself wondering if the Trust’s devotion to uniforms, titles, and symbols of privilege can be traced back to Cesar’s boarding school experiences. The speculation isn’t nearly so far-fetched as it sounds. After all, Aiglon, with its contingent of royal residents, its No. 1 Dress uniforms and rank pins, its “Bouquetin badges,” “Colours Awards,” “Five Star” certificates, merit cups, and trophies, reveled in the kind of ornamentalism later deployed by the Badische boys. And there’s something else worth mentioning. While we were at Aiglon, Cesar and I were shown a movie called
The Captain from Koepenick,
an obscure 1956 tale of imposture chronicling the exploits of an indigent shoemaker who pulls the wool over the eyes of an entire town after purchasing a captain’s dress uniform from a secondhand shop. The authority that the self-styled “captain” accrues by wearing a gold-braided outfit is a lot like the legitimacy that “Prince” Robert acquired by donning a Maltese cross and a medallion-studded sash. Isn’t it possible our rank-obsessed boarding school inspired the paraphernalia on show at the Waldorf? If so, that would give Cesar a much bigger role in the scam than the trial testimony indicates.

I present my theory to Laurence.

“Seems like a stretch,” she says.

{Universal Studios, 1960}

The Captain from Koepenick,
screened at Aiglon in 1972, anticipated the sartorial embellishments of the Badische boys.

Her skepticism does little to dilute my conviction. The penchant for Montblanc fountain pens, the parallels between the blazer patch and the carte de visite, and now this. The overlaps make me all the more determined to clarify Cesar’s role in the fraud. Was he, as his
sister argued, a victim? Or, as his felony conviction and my experiences in Switzerland suggested, a masterful fake-out artist with a knack for misdirection? Or—a third option—a small-time roper with a minor role in an elaborate fraud? It’s impossible to tell given how little I know.

The Captain from Koepenick
concludes on a cheery note both for its lead character and the community he dupes. The submission of Barbara Laurence did not end so happily.

Laurence flew to Zurich on June 15, 1999, checked into a downtown hotel, and waited for Cesar’s call. When he made contact the following morning, he told her to join him at the Dolder Grand, a hotel spa on the outskirts of the city, and await further instructions. After yet another lengthy delay in the lobby of yet another five-star hotel, a Badische lackey guided Cesar and his client to a suite that managed to outdo the gilded splendor of the Waldorf, enlivened, as it was, by panoramic views of Zurich and the Alps.