Edmond Safra

Edmond J. Safra (Arabic: ادموند يعقوب صفرا; 6 August 1932 – 3 December 1999) was a Lebanese-Brazilian billionaire banker and philanthropist of Syrian descent.

[11] By the time he was sixteen, Edmond Safra was working at his father's bank in Beirut, engaged in the precious metals and foreign exchange aspects of the business.

When he was 16, he earned $40 million during arbitrage transactions between Italian and British gold sovereigns and used this money to obtain a financial house in Geneva which became his Trade Development Bank which used only ancient Arabic script for its bookkeeping.

The financier came out on top, winning a public apology from American Express for starting a smear campaign against him[14] and US$8 million in damages, all of which he donated to charities.

He was a major philanthropist during his lifetime, and he left his wealth to the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation[18] which supports hundreds of projects in fifty countries around the world in the areas of education, science, medicine, religion, culture and humanitarian assistance.

[20][a][b] The IMF funds, which Italian newspaper la Repubblica estimated at $21.4 billion,[20][23][24][25] are said to have caused the Russian financial crisis of 1998.

[20][26][27][c] As he approached his 60s, Safra divided his time between his homes in Monaco, Geneva, and New York City and the Villa Leopolda on the French Riviera.

[35] In December 1999, Safra and nurse Vivian Torrente were suffocated by fumes in a fire deliberately lit at the billionaire's Monaco home,[36][37][38] where he apparently felt so safe that he did not have his bodyguards stay the night.

[31][40] Safra's nurse Ted Maher was arrested[41] under suspicion of starting the fire in order to gain attention "through a daring rescue", and then losing control unintentionally.

Edmond Safra, whose family had old ties with the city of Aleppo, offered to transfer 4,500 Syrian Jews by plane and financed their settling in Brooklyn.

Many of these were built in the world's major Jewish centers, but he also helped to build synagogues in more remote communities such as Manila and Kinshasa.

Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research and a number of different centers studying specific diseases in France, the United States, and elsewhere around the world.

He was also one of the world's most significant benefactors of yeshivot (religious schools training young men to be rabbis, Jewish teachers, and judges), assisting numerous institutions worldwide.