Edmond Safra death: the plot thickens - Sunday Times

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July 31, 2005

The plot to kill the banker
Matthew Campbell, Paris



THE circumstances surrounding the death of Edmond Safra, the billionaire banker who died in a fire in a Monaco penthouse five years ago, are to be re- examined in court when a male nurse found guilty of starting the blaze goes on trial for escaping from prison.
According to his lawyer, Ted Maher, the American nurse who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2002, will reveal details of a conspiracy against Safra. The banker died after locking himself in a “panic room” where he choked on fumes from the blaze.



“Ted is going to tell what really happened that night,” said Mike Griffith, an American lawyer famous for helping his fellow countrymen who get into trouble overseas.

Maher will testify that masked intruders broke into Safra’s apartment, apparently determined to kill or kidnap the banker who had Parkinson’s disease and needed constant care. The intruders fled after Maher, 47, a former Green Beret commando, struggled with one of them and was injured.

His account is certain to give a new lease of life to conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Safra, who was one of the world’s richest men. He employed private bodyguards but they had been given the night off on the evening of the fire. Videotape from a closed-circuit camera in the apartment mysteriously went missing.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1714899,00.html