Managed to get a couple of hours in the Hope Café this week, in between returning from Portugal and flying to Singapore on Sunday evening. I had promised to meet Lisa, as she is gathering information for a piece she’s writing about Low Level Health Care in the United Kingdom. We agreed to meet on Tuesday, before my haircut with Monika at Amor on Palmeira Square.
Tuesday afternoons in the Hope Café are never very busy and, despite a manic diary for this week, I found myself slightly early for Lisa. With an espresso in hand, went and sat at one of the tables, my mind running over our recent three weeks in Estoril (See PC 454 Portugal’s Estoril). One of the joys of being with Cecilia and Toni is that every now and again the conversation uncovers a gem of a story. I shouldn’t be surprised, given that Cecilia has lived in Boston and Washington as well as in Rio de Janeiro and Toni’s parents were Brazilian diplomats so lived a peripatetic life. I think it was Toni who happened to say he knew someone whose mother had accumulated a great deal of money through a number of failed marriages. Then Cecilia remembered a Brazilian named Lily Safra whose story is one of a colourful and intriguing life, worthy of writing just the highlights!
Lily Safra was born in 1934 in Porte Alegre in Brazil, grew up in Rio and moved with her family to Montevideo, Urugay. Aged 17 she married Mario Cohen with whom she had three children, before divorcing some ten years later. So far, so normal, you might think. In 1965 she married Alfredo Monteverde, a Romanian Jewish immigrant, who ran the Ponto Frio household appliance distribution business, only for him to commit suicide four years later. Her late husband’s banker, a chap called Edmond Safra, a Sephardic Jew, helped her secure control over her late husband’s entire fortune. A brief romance with Safra ended as his family disapproved of Lily’s Ashkenazi Jewish faith, so in 1972 she married a businessman called Samuel Bendahan, separating after two weeks and divorcing a year later.
Four years later, in 1976, she and Edmond Safra, who had founded the Republic National Bank of New York, married. The couple divided their time between homes in New York, Monaco, Geneva and the Villa Leopolda on the French Riveria. A day after the couple gained Monegasque citizenship, on 3 December 1999, Edmond died in a fire in his apartment. The fire was started by a former US Green Beret, Ted Maher, whose plan was to rescue Safra and be forever in his debt; it went out of control! Maher was sentenced to ten years in goal but sawed his way out of his prison window and escaped to France. There’s a film here, isn’t there? (See PS)
Edmond and Lily Safra
In my last Estoril PC (PC 454) I included the view from the bathroom window around 0200 one morning, the street brightly lit with the sodium streetlight.
Note the little grey gate to the left of the tree
The other morning around 0320 I needed a pee …. and noticed a chap outside the gates of the house almost opposite. He had arrived on a smart electric scooter, parked it on the pavement and was interrogating his mobile phone. I realised he was actually texting or talking to someone ….. at 0322! A minute or so later the pedestrian gate swung open and he disappeared up the driveway – leaving his scooter, lights on, outside. I imagined a number of scenarios; a male escort arriving to party was dismissed as he would have taken the scooter inside; no Pizza delivery or Uber Eats as he wasn’t carrying anything; … so I suspected he was your local drug delivery chap ….. just dial a number, order your Cocaine or ecstasy and in no time it arrives.
The same chap the following afternoon
My colourful thoughts were dashed when I saw him the following afternoon, again trying to interact with someone inside the house, but his efforts were rebuffed by a chap at the gate and he was shooed away. Romance has its ups and downs and I don’t now think he is a drug delivery man.
The family apartment is on the northern slopes of Estoril. Outside a house in the square near the casino, the Estoril motor racing circuit is laid out in black blocks on the white pavement.
The circuit itself is some 6 kilometres further inland and last week they were hosting the Porsche Cup Brazil.
Sound carries and it becomes a tedious background noise, unchanging except for the gears. I imagine the drivers taking their cars around the circuit know what they’re doing and how to handle the vehicles. Sadly, the majority of Portuguese drivers demonstrate some of the worst aspects of driving, possibly summed up by their brain saying: ‘I am entitled to do what I want.’ Woe betides a pedestrian who gets in their way. Those who can’t elevate their skills to going around the racing track take to the streets in the early hours, both the car and the driver screaming with delight. Not a view shared by the light sleepers.
Just as I was thinking Lisa wasn’t going to show, she rushes in in a bit of a lather ……..
“Hi! Richard. Gosh! I am so sorry I’m late. Got involved in a meeting with the editor of The Argus, discussing current assignments and what we might like to look at. You know I want to get any views you have on the current GP system here?”
“Yes, and in preparation I asked a couple of doctors I know …… and I will come on to that but, a couple of afterthoughts from Portugal …..”
(To be continued)
Richard 12th September 2025
Hove
PS Lily died in 2022 from pancreatic cancer aged 87, with a net worth of some $1.3 billion.
postcards 