FT long read: The Fugitive Prince

hold of his inheritance. It features international corruption, missing Caravaggio's espionage operations, daring cross border escapes, and even a cameo from JR.

and an array of counts and countesses displaced by the war. Carol, who died in nineteen fifty three, didn't live long enough to see the rise of Nikolai Chiocescu's communist dictator. After the end of Romania's monarchy, the new regime seized the immense wealth Carol had left behind, worth the equivalent of billions of euros today. Among other treasures, this included extravagant palaces,

vast tracts of land, and vaults of gold. Many of the prize possessions Carol managed to flee with, including one of the largest rare stamp collections in the world, were sold off in exile, but some treasures, including forty old master paintings by Caravaggio, Grembrand, Breugel and el Greco, seemingly vanished. It was a loss that anybody would mourn, but for one man, there was a part of King Carol the

Second's inheritance more valuable than anything his name. That was something he'd spent his entire adult life trying to reclaim. In a final desperate attempt to get it, he would strike an audacious deal with a crew of international businessmen and convicted criminals that ultimately led to exile and infamy.

a continental finishing school. Depending on who you believe, his true name is Prince Paul Philippe al Romanee, Crown Prince of Romania, grandson of King Carol the Second and a direct descendant of Queen Victoria of England and Czar Alexander the Second of Russia. To his enemies, he's simply Paul Lambrino, a fantasist who, even after everything that happened, claims airship to a non existent throne. Paul, who was born in France in nineteen forty eight, grew up with his father's stories.

He was told about Romania's fairy tale palaces, lustrous countryside and peasant folk songs. It sounded like a distant fantasy, but it was also a place of sorrow. It was the site of an injustice that cast a shadow over his entire life. Romania, his father explained, wasn't just their lost country, it was their stolen kingdom, and Paul was a prince. Paul's lineage stemmed from a royal controversy dating

back more than a century. When Carol was still a hard partying heir to the throne, he eloped with a beautiful young socialite named Zizi Lambrino. Carol's father was furious, and he ordered the union annulled. The young Carol was temporarily banished to a monastery and forbidden from ever seeing her again, but Lambrino was pregnant with a son Paul's father. On his Romanian birth certificate, the space for the father's name should have read King Carol Second, but it was blank.

The surname was listed as Lambrino, legally recording his illegitimacy. As a teen, Paul was packed off to Britain, where he attended Millfield Boarding School in Somerset, before deciding to skip university to make his way in nineteen sixties London. He worked variously as a fashion photographer and an art dealer, living in a flat off the King's Road in Chelsea. In his late twenties, Paul began to have vivid dreams

about his grandfather after the Lambrino affair. Carol had been briefly married to a Greek princess with whom he'd had another son, Michael. This legitimate heir had never acknowledged Paul or his father, so in the late nineteen seventies, Paul traveled to Portugal to seek out the woman who'd been Carol's wife at the end of his life life she was still living in the villa, but when Paul got there he found she was gravely ill.

like Elizabeth Taylor and talked like Joan Rivers. She was at the party playing hooky from her postgraduate studies at Oxford Paul until then a resolute bachelor was instantly taken. They had plenty in common. Leah was of Romanian Herite two. They were both shameless name droppers, referencing famous acquaintances from the Dalai Lama to the Sultan of Brunei, and both had made regrettable mistakes in their youth, but it may

have been their differences that truly bonded them. Leah was born in the late nineteen forties and grew up in Dearborn, Michigan. In her early twenties, she married the famously pugnacious San Francisco celebrity attorney Melvin Belli, who represented Jajar Gabour and the Rolling Stones. He was forty two years her senior.

Leah became a well known San Francisco socialite, attending art openings in white cocked hats and mustard suede suits, and throwing parties in the eighteenth floor suite of the Intercontinental. Mark Hopkins hotel for guests such as Joe DiMaggio and Rudolph Nuriev. In nineteen eighty four, she unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the California State Senate and was later fined for making disguise campaign contributions to herself. That didn't stop her from working as an adviser in both the

Carter and Reagan Whitehouses in the mid nineteen eighties. The marriage ended in a spectacularly acrimonious public divorce. Leah said bell I had emotionally and physically abused her. Bell I accused his wife of having multiple affairs, including with the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which she denied. Bell I later claimed a friend of hers had threatened to kill him, and that Leah had thrown their dog off the Golden Gate Bridge,

which he also denied. Bell I was thrown out of court during the hearings for claiming the judge has slept of his wife too. The spectacle filled so many columnachres that Leah's name ended up as an answer to a question on the game show Jeopardy.

moved to Romania permanently. The Revolutions of nineteen eighty nine had swept away the Communist dictatorship and left a fledgling republic. Although he and Leah barely knew the country and there was no chance of the monarchy being restored, Paul was convinced that Romania was their destiny. They settled in Bucharest and began courting public attention. During his dictatorship, Choucescu had allowed only one Western television show to be broadcast, Dallas.

The idea was that the gaudy lifestyles and petulant feuding of Texan oil barons would demonstrate the greed and decadence of America. The idea backfired. Dallas was a smash hit and j r ewing Its star character, played by Larry Hagman, became a national idol. At one point, Lea says she flew into London, where Hagman happened to be, and talked him into coming. But you know, Princess, I'm kinda retired.

government officials would didn't let him in. His elderly uncle, Michael, was still living in exile in Switzerland at the time, but he too had begun making trips home. They'd never spoken, but Paul held out hope for some kind of reconciliation. He sent Michael a heartfelt letter by registered posts. There was no response. On the occasions that Paul and Lea found themselves at the same events as Michael or his children.

process had stalled. That's when Paul was first contacted by a man who claimed he could turn his dreams into reality. When they met in person in a lawyer's office in downtown Bucharest, the man introduced himself as Remus Treca. In his thirties, Treaca was tanned, with a chiseled jaw and a whiff of money. He'd made millions in the Romanian telecom sector, and he enjoyed the good life, expensive suits,

fine cigars, and rare wine. He owned a yacht, which he named after his wife, and sailed around Monte Carlo.

of his inheritance to people. He didn't know that Paul could see without heavyweight assistance, he might end up with nothing. It would take several years for Paul to find out that reciply A's large at financial backer was a man named Benny Steinmetz. The Israeli billionaire, then in his fifties, had piercing blue eyes and a seemingly insatiable appetite for

making high risk deals in extremely corrupt countries. He'd inherited his family's diamond business and expanded from selling precious stones to sourcing them directly in Africa. Steinmetz made headlines around the world in two thousand and eight for securing a vast iron ore mining concession in Guinea with terms so favorable that rivals were left wondering how he'd pulled it off.

Dubbed the deal of the Century, it netted a staggering profit of several billion dollars in less than two years after his company flipped a stake in the project to the Brazilian miner Varleet. After that, says one person who knows him well, Benny was always looking for a lot of upside. Guys like Benny, they don't care about a twenty percent return. They're looking for huge bets, a minimum of ten times or ideally thirty times on their money.

The Prince Paul deal promised exactly that, even if Reciplyia's upfront costs for lawyers and paus walking around money reached upwards of twenty million euros. The potential payout would still be immense. An initial assessment found the Romanian royal fortune could be worth as much as one billion dollars. At one stage, there was even the idea that the country's gold reserves belonged to the royal family. The Steinmetz associate said,

like how Congo belonged to King Leopold of Belgium. Benny looked at the underlying assets and the value is there, he said. The past few decades have not been particularly glorious ones for European monarchs and former royals, with most restitution claims faltering. In two thousand and two, Greece's deposed King Constantine the Second was awarded a tiny fraction of the three hundred and twenty million pounds and seized the

states he claimed to be owed by the government. Vittorio Emanuele, son of Umberto the Second, punched his cousin in the face to the party in two thousand and four during a row over which of them was the true heir to Italy's non existent throne. He later sued the state for more than two hundred million euros of confiscated property

and lost. Juan Carlos, the First of Spain was forced to abdicate in twenty fourteen after a string of financial scandals, and last year, the heirs of Germany's Kaiservilhelm the Second gave up on a nearly decade long battle to regain hundreds of works of art, the imperial crown and scepter, and various castles. After several months, considering Reciplia's audacious offer,

Paul decided to sign the agreement. Steinmetz would provide the cash. Treaca, the flashy businessman, was going to be on the ground in Romania with the lawyers and local authorities, but to succeed they needed to recruit a number of other specialists, each with a different set of highly valuable skills. First was Tao Silberstein, a former Israeli Special forces commando turned

international political consultant. He'd built a reputation for being cunning and sometimes ruthless, cutting his teeth working for the US posters and consultants James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, and later advising politicians in Austria, Ukraine, and Romania.

Project Prince soon had a far more valuable target, a vast tract of land in the north of Bucharest called the Banessa Royal Farm, formerly belonging to King Carol. The Second Banessa, was an agricultural estate that had once served the royal household. If that land could be redeveloped, it could be worth hundreds of millions of euros. There was one significant hurdle. The land was occupied by a state research body, the Bucharest Plant Protection Research and Development Institute.

Its director, an elderly man named Horria Iliescue, feared the institute would be shut down if the land was signed over Under the obscure regulation involved, Iliescue's refusal would have been enough to block the deal. Wooing him took some time. Then, early one morning in September two thousand and eight, Treca noticed he had missed numerous calls. The businessman had invited Iliescu to take a cruise on his yacht in Monte Carlo during an upcoming trip to the south of France.

Good morning, Treeca said. When he called back, I apologize. I was playing tennis. I called several times, because this is what I call being polite, Iliescu replied. The director, seemingly nervous and bumbling, launched into a rambling explanation of telephone Ettiger. Despite having spent months refusing to countenance to transfer, Iliescu was now eagerly looking forward to his trip with Trica, he wanted to confirm the details of his hotel in France.

Not long afterwards, Iliescue got on a flight from Bucharest de Nie, where he was picked up in a Mercedes Vito Van by Treeca's driver and taken to Monaco. Once there, he and Treca had lunch and sailed on Treca's yacht. Exactly what happened on the boat is unclear, but after returning to Romania, Iliescu appears to have undergone a complete change of opinion about signing over Vanessa Royal Farm. Iliescu

died of natural causes not long afterwards. Treca denies that he paid for Iliescu's trip to France.

The following January, Vanessa Royal Farm was officially transferred to Reciplia. The feeling of triumph didn't last. Some members of Project Prince were becoming suspicious of one another. Some worried that Treeca was skimming money from the operation, something he strongly denied. Paul also started to wonder if something was off. Rather than selling Vanessa and distributing the prophets, Reciplia told him it wanted to develop the land instead delaying his payout.

Paul and Leah complained to Silberstein, the political consultant. He was busy trying to keep the couple plicated by getting them favorable coverage in the Romanian press. In October twenty eleven, Silberstein rang up a friendly journalist, Listen, you have to help more with the princess, he said. The fact that she's nagging, it's not helpful for the project, you know. Paul started to notice people following him and his wife around Bukarest. Then he began to suspect that Reciplia had

ex Mossad officers on its payroll. They, he said, told us on one point they were there to make us feel safe, but they were there to find out our weaknesses, he said. Steinmetz denied employing any former intelligence officers during Project Prince, calling it a blatant lie and another deceitful rumor aimed at conveying false impressions to keep.

he said. Paul remembered Steinmetz's calming the couple's worries. Steinmetz disputed this account of the meeting, saying it was a courtesy visit of maybe two, three or four minutes.

met them, they were completely broke. Completely. Everything you see is our money project. Prince Silberstein worried was falling apart. He had no idea how right he was. Laura Kadruta Caves didn't look like the person Romania's matro politicians and gangster's most feared. In her early forties, with jet black hair cut into an anna winter bob, she often wore pink lipstick. Caves had been Romania's youngest ever prosecutor general.

Then in twenty thirteen, she was appointed to lead a new anti graft office called the National Anti Corruption Directorate. Her mandate was to route out high level crimes in one of the EU's most corrupt countries, and she moved fast. In her first two years on the job, Cavesy indicted fourteen current or former members of Parliament, four government ministers, the mayor of Bucharest, and stunning the country the prime minister.

It was lonely work. Cavesy, who'd grown up in a small Transylvanian town, was known to say she didn't have friends, just acquaintances. She often walked alone around Bucharest, watched over by state security agents. The Prime minister, who her investigation had forced out of office, claimed that she was trying to make a name by inventing and imagining facts that Kavasi believed she was fighting for the soul of her country.

For the first time in Romania's modern history, the powerful were being held to account.

In late twenty fifteen, Cavesy appeared on national television to announce a sweeping new indictment. Prince Paul, Treaca, Steinmetz Silberstein and others, she said, had been charged with establishing a criminal group to bribe and corrupt public officials, all of it in what she said were bogus inheritance claims. The damages the group had inflicted on the state from reclaiming Vanessa and the other land exceeded one hundred million euros.

It was an enormous amount, Cavesi said on air. It would be the equivalent of the allowance that approximately one million children in Romania could receive for one year.

They began to rush from room to room, searching under beds and inside The couple's walking safe but her husband wasn't there. Leah knew she had to warn him. Cavasi had been pursuing the members of Project Prints for a while. Leah picked up a phone, suspecting that every line in the house was Wiatt hated darling. She said when she got through to Paul, stay calm. There's this huge, huge confusion.

You cannot leave for Romania. They will arrest you. I can't give you any more information, but please please get a lawyer. Then she hung up on the other end of the line.

a day long drive. As the hours passed in the back of the taxi, Paul thought about Lea, When would he be able to see her again. He thought about Romania, the homeland he'd spent his life dreaming about and was now trying to put him in prison. And he thought of his grandfather, King Carol, who had fled across Europe.

he was. The police officer walked away with the documents. While Paul waited. All he could do was silently reassure himself, at least in France, better to be arrested here than in Romania. The police officer returned to the taxi slowly. Then he handed over the passport and waved them on. As Paul snaked down the Mediterranean coast towards Naples. The

other members of Project Prints were in total disarray. After several years battling Covesi's chargers, some of them had been convicted and sentenced to prison in a country with some of the most notoriously brutal jails in Europe. Into polar rest warrants had been issued for Paul as well as Steinmetz and Silberstein had been sentenced to five years in prison each. Steinmetz was in Dubai at the time, out of reach, but Treeca was already in a Romanian jail

serving a seven year sentence. Even Rosu, the high powered lawyer, had been convicted. Treeca told me that he had only ever acted legally during his work on Project Prints, and that the conviction was unjust, and that there were serious problems and errors with the evidence that was used against him, including the use of wire taps gathered by Romania's secret

intelligence service. Treeca also alleged that an unnamed Romanian prosecutor threatened him to gather evidence against other members of the team. The prosecutor told me that he knows I am innocent, but that he will go ahead with the case if I do not accept to make allegations against certain persons of interest to him, Treaca said. Silberstein declined to comment in book Arest. Leah had no way of contacting her

husband or even knowing where he was. Then a coded message came through passed from Paul via a lawyer, reading I am in the place where I was a child. She was overcome with relief, realizing that Paul was in France. He traveled all the way across Europe in taxis to Naples, only to decide he would be safest in the country of his birth.

to do whatever she could. They didn't understand that even though it was blessed to be born an educated part of my life in America, I've also got a stronger backbone, she told me. I'm not able to be broken. Project Prince was not the only one of Benny Steinmetz's high risk, high reward deals going bad. In fact, his legal problems around the world seemed to be spiraling out of control.

Several years before the Romanian indictment, a former employee of Steinmetz's who had worked on the Guinea mining deal, was arrested by the FBI. Federal agents had secretly recorded him plotting to destroy evidence suggesting millions of dollars in bribes had been paid by Steinmetz's company to one of the ex wives of Guinea's former dictator. The Guinean government then accused Steinmetz's bribery and said it would strip the rights to the mine from his company and Valet, the Brazilian miner.

The US probe into the Guinea deal hadn't implicated Steinmetz directly, but he had been charged by a Swiss court for bribery relating to the deal. He appeared to sink under the weight of a growing number of civil and criminal cases brought against him. In twenty eighteen, Steinmetz's holding company put itself into voluntary administration to try and protect its assets from further legal claims. Then Varlet accused Steinmetz of deliberately misleading it into a deal he knew was tainted

by corruption. Varlet launched a claim for billions and damages in courts in London and New York. By December twenty twenty one, a year after the police arrived at Paul and Leah's door, Steinmetz had been arrested in Greece on a European arrest warrant issued by Romania and barred from leaving the country before an extradition hearing in Romania. Someone had been trying to hit back. Shortly after Cavesy appeared on national television to announce the Project Prince Indictment. An

ex colleague contacted her about a strange experience. The colleague had been approached by a recruitment agency based in the UK about a lucrative job, but when she went for an interview, they only seemed to be interested in asking about working with Cavesy. Then someone using a British number rang up Cavasi's elderly farm at home, claiming they were organizing a conference in London they wanted to pay him to attend. Her father, who didn't speak English, was suspicious

and told his daughter. More members of her family were approached by odd sounding outfits, seemingly using job offers as a pretext to gather information about Kvasi. In March twenty sixteen, two athletic young men, one with a Belgian passport and the other an Israeli national, flew into Bucharest's Henry Cowander airport. One had reddish brown hair and a beard, and was wearing blue jeans, white sneakers and a black jacket. The other was dressed all in black apart from a white shirt.

They checked into a hotel downtown and got to work soon and Kevesi began to get security alerts on her official and personal email accounts, suggesting someone as trying to hack her. The two men were undercover agents dispatched in Romania as part of an espionage operation targeting Cavesy called Project Tornado. They weren't spies working for a government. They were from the Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube, founded

in twenty ten. Black Cube advertises itself as being made up of a select group of veterans from Israeli elite intelligence units. The company became internationally notorious for its work on behalf of convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein during his attempts to stifle investigations into his crimes. Steinmetz has been

one of Black Cube's most important clients. He used undercover agents from the firm to secretly record executives from Varlas, admitting that they were aware the Guinea deal they were suing him over had been.

Steinmetz was one of several people suspected and investigated by the Romanian police's organized crime unit, but the case was later closed due to a lack of evidence. Steinmetz denies having any role in Black Cube's work in Romania and said he had only ever employed the company once. He called the suspicions raised against him a clear slander by the Romanian authority to justify the prosecution against me, which

was clearly politically motivated. When Black Cube CEO Dan Zarella was interviewed by Romanian police, he gave a puzzling explanation as to why his firm had taken on the Caves operation. According to a transcript obtained by Haretz, the Israeli newspaper, Zarella said the company was hired by a former Romanian intelligence officer who claimed that the work they would carry out was on behalf of the SRI, the country's spy agency.

Black Cube later said it was hired by a senior official in Romania and fully cooperated with the Romanian authorities to solve this matter. In France, Paul had eventually reported himself to the authorities and defeated a first request by Romania to bring him back to serve out his sentence. By April twenty twenty four, Lea had joined him. Emboldened by his victory, Paul decided to accept an invitation from an order of the Knights of Malta to visit the

Mediterranean island. His lawyers warned him he was taking a huge risk, but Paul was certain the Romanian government wouldn't try and have him arrested. He flew to Valetta with Leah and Pastory immigration without a problem. On their third day on the island, three Martes policemen approached Paul and arrested him on the orders of the Romanian state. Leah watched as her husband was taken away. By that evening, Paul was in Corodino Prison, a penitentiary built in the

nineteenth century under British colonial rule. It was a shock, he said, you go from being in a five star hotel to being in prison. Paul knew the Romanian state would press as hard as possible to have him extradited. Rosu, the lawyer convicted for his work on Project Prince, had been jailed in conditions he described as a metal cage. He was later acquitted and released. In Malta, Paul was placed in a section of the jail reserved for high

profile inmates. One was a computer hacker awaiting extradition to the US. Another was the Maltese businessman on trial for the murder of the journalist Daphne Caroana Galitzia. During his first days, Paul tried to stay calm, like a good sovereign and make conversation with the other prisoners. None of them seemed to find the presence of a fugitive prints on their block particularly remarkable. In the mornings, the prisoners

played football in the courtyard. Sometimes Paul would watch cable television, mostly CNN, but this was difficult as he wasn't allowed his metal rimmed glasses in prison, they were deemed a security threat. Most days they were served fried food, which Paul described as like KFC. He looked forward to thursdays, when the inmates were given roast lamb to keep his mind occupied. He read the firm by John Grisham and bonded with a dutch Man accused of international cocaine trafficking.

He wasn't too bad, I suppose, Paul told me. He took two or three showers a day. Two months passed as Paul's lawyers worked to have him released on bail. Finally the Maltese authorities agreed. The other inmates applauded as Prince Paul walked out of the iron gates of the prison. He felt triumphant, even though he knew there was another painful way ahead of him, this time to see if Maltese judges would side with him or the Romanian state. And the first time I met Paul was in early

August twenty twenty four. We were inside Malta's courts of Justice, where I just watched as a judge read out a lengthy administrative procedure in Maltese. This resulted in another uncertainty laced delay. Paul was under strict bail conditions, reporting to the police twice a day. His passport had been temporarily confiscated. The next morning we met again at a local hotel.

Lea and Paul's lawyers were present this time. Paul told me he was holding up well and he was relieved to be with his family, but he was noticeably shaken. At times, he was energized and defiant. At others his voice became weary. In court, Paul's Maltese lawyer, Jason as a Party, argued that Romania's prisons were so overcrowded and dilapidated that it would be an abuse of his client's

human rights to keep him there. During the hearings, the Romanian government sent four officials to Malta to put ford its case for extra lighting Paul. It's quite abnormal. As a Party told me, I do not recall any case where the representatives of the foreign government came over to testify. Sitting with him, it was clear that Paul was exhausted. He'd fought his entire life to be accepted, yet here he was facing disgrace and years behind bars, not as

Prince Paul of Romania, but as Paul Lambrino Krook. As Paul waited to learn his fate, I traveled to Athens to meet Steinmetz. Thanks to his project Prince Conviction, Greece is one of only three European countries the billionaire can travel to without fearing arrest. The Israeli had beaten an attempt by the Romanian state to extradite him after he was briefly arrested in Athens back in twenty twenty one. We met on a warm summer evening on the terrace

of a taverna not far from Syntagma Square. It was the middle of August and the restaurant was nearly deserted. Later, he told me that he never did anything illegal in Romania and was never aware of any of his partners paying bribes. It was a pure business, he told me. Steinmetz's heavily accented English is delivered in the near whisper of a man accustomed to those around him falling silent when he talks. We do hundreds of deals in different sectors,

and what we saw was a good financial opportunity. The Romanian conviction, Steinmetz told me, was politically motivated by local officials who didn't want to see a foreigner succeed. It was all fixed in advance, he said. It was a rigged game, calling the conviction against him a joke, a Romanian joke. In Switzerland, Steinmetz has been convicted for bribery in one of Africa's poorest countries. He is appealing, but the chances of him serving a prison sentence are slim.

The Guineaan state has since settled its claims against his company. Steinmetz told me he was unfazed by the fact that Romania's European arrest warrant for him is still outstanding. What do I need to worry about to worry about something I haven't done? Because I can't fly to Europe, I can fly to the rest of the world. I can do whatever I want. As I left, I was alarmed

by the thought that perhaps he was right. Judges across Europe have independently cast serious doubts about Romania's case against the Project Prince Crew, with Greece, Cyprus, Malta and France all independently rejecting attempts by Romania to extradite Steinmetz and Paul. Interpol later ruled to delete the warrants against them, deciding, according to a ruling scene by the FT, that the use of secret service wiretapping was deemed contrary to fair

trial standards. The ruling also said there were serious concerns regarding the existence of political elements in the Romanian criminal case against them. Late last summer, paulsted in a Martese court for the last time, as it was announced that Romania's attempts to extradite him had been rejected. He was free to return to France, and Lea was joyed to be going back to Paris. What was that film? If

it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium. Tomorrow we'll stay with my husband's dear friend who has a castle in France. From a dungeon to a castle and one day, how many people from the Midwest can say that? Weeks later I learned that Paul had managed to track down several of the missing paintings spirited out of Romania in the

nineteen forties. Based on Paul's legal claims, a French judge has frozen the transfer of two El Greco's, opening up the possibility that, after three decades, he might finally receive some small piece of his inheritance. During one of our last conversations, I asked him whether, after all the setbacks, the arrest, warrants, the fleeing and jail, he ever regretted having returned to Romania. I'm from birth from conception, the grandson of King Carol. He said, I respect Romania's republic,

but I am really the rightful Crown Prince. The Fugitive Prince was written by me Myles Johnson and edited by Matt Veller. It was produced by Misha Frankel Duval and Laura Clarke. Mix and sound design were by Breen Turner.