In retrospect, it is constantly an easy task to say, “Oh, yes, I knew, i usually knew,” about this one or that one, when that one or any particular one involves an end that is bad winds up in disgrace. A variety of those who knew Roberto Polo have actually explained that whenever they first heard that disaster had been going to befall him, they believed to the one who informed them, “I’m not surprised, will you be?” plus the informant invariably replied that he or she had not been astonished either.
Polo, a thirty-seven-year-old Cuban-born citizen that is american residences in Paris, nyc, Monte Carlo, and Santo Domingo, happens to be in jail in Italy, where he had been arrested in June. He could be desired for questioning in Switzerland, France, plus the united states of america regarding the so-called misappropriation of $110 million of their investors’ money. During the time of their arrest, he previously been a fugitive from what the law states for five months, together with been rumored either to possess tried and bought refuge in Latin America or even to have already been murdered because of the extremely people he had been believed to have swindled, in the concept that, if caught, he could expose their identities.
“Roberto had numerous personas it had been hard to understand that has been the genuine person,” one of his true previous employees thought to me personally in explaining him. A middle-class Cuban with hopes and dreams of glory, Polo were things that are many many individuals, from household man to philanderer, from elegant boulevardier to preposterous phony, from fantasizer to fuckup associated with United states Dream. A guy along with his ability to endear himself to numerous together with likability and charm also to enrage other people together with grandiosity and pomposity, he supplied uniformity of viewpoint those types of whom knew him in a single thing just: he previously taste that is exquisite.
We first came across Roberto along with his incredibly wife that is attractive Rosa, a Dominican by delivery, the child of a diplomat additionally the relative of an old president of this nation, in 1984, at a tiny supper for eight or ten people in ny, during the house of John Loring, senior vice president of Tiffany & Co. they certainly were the couple that is youngest into the team, recognized to all of the visitors but me.
It absolutely was maybe perhaps not until we sat right down to supper that We noticed the extraordinary band Rosa Polo ended up being putting on, a diamond therefore huge it might have now been impossible never to discuss it.
As you who may have held within the fingers and stared during the ice-skating-rink-size diamond bands of Elizabeth Taylor, Candy Spelling, and Imelda Marcos, we noticed that the young girl across from me personally ended up being putting on one larger as well as perhaps much better than them all. I asked her about any of it, and before she could answer Roberto called straight down from their end of this dining table and provided your whole reputation for the jewel. It absolutely was the Ashoka diamond, a 41.37-carat D-flawless rock known as after Ashoka Maurya, the third-century B.C. Buddhist warrior-emperor. Polo had got it for their spouse through the Mexican film celebrity Maria Felix.
Demonstrably the Polos had been a young number of consequence, nonetheless it ended up being difficult to get yourself a line on it. Rosa had been peaceful, nearly timid, a Latin spouse whom lived when you look at the shadow of her spouse, and Roberto delivered down signals that are mixed. He had been reported to be a wizard that is financial and he had his or her own company, called pamg, for Private resource Management Group. He managed the financial affairs of the group that is select of rich international investors with assets in america.
He reclined in languid jobs that very very first night, along with his talk had been distinctly nonfinancial, about precious precious precious jewelry and fashion and Jacob Freres, Ltd., a collectibles store that had recently exposed on Madison Avenue and Seventy-eighth Street, which had been run by Rosa’s sibling, Federico Suro. They offered ormolu-encrusted furniture fit for palaces, and massive porcelain urns, all at costs into the thousands of bucks. Roberto must have been a genuine aesthete, mad about stunning things, along with his fascination with fashion, which may be obsession within the years ahead, had been obvious. As being a graduate pupil at Columbia into the very early seventies, he had worked at Rizzoli, the art-book store, and had appear utilizing the notion of performing a show called “Fashion as Fantasy,” with fashion developers showing clothing as art items.
These people were a few in a rush, or in other words Roberto was at a rush, and Rosa ended up being swept along inside the vortex. He previously apparently produced his spouse, switching her from a sweet Latin girl right into a sleek and glamorous figure that is international. He selected her clothing, informed her exactly what jewels to put on, decided to go with their supper visitors, did the sitting, and ordered the plants and menu. He went along to the collections in Paris along with her, as well as in one period invested fifty per cent of a million bucks on garments on her behalf. A passion was had by him for precious precious jewelry and an understanding of gemology. His part model, based on the interior designer and socialite Suzie Frankfurt, ended up being Cosimo de’ Medici.
“i did son’t want it stated I happened to be simply a rich kid,” he said in an earlier meeting, before his woes, just as if he had been the heir to a fantastic fortune as opposed to an so-called usurper of other people’s cash.
Such as a Cuban Gatsby, an outsider together with nose pushed to your screen, Roberto Polo wanted all of it in which he desired it fast, in which he saw, into the money-mad ny associated with the eighties, the best way to attain their aspirations.
1988 july. The image was improbable. A new blond girl of extraordinary loveliness, using a light summer time gown, ended up being leaning from the pay-telephone booth into the courtyard for the jail in Lucca, an Italian walled city between Pisa and Florence. She ended up being reading an English novel and periodically using sips of Pellegrino water from a bottle that is green. On the top above her, a guard with a submachine gun paced forward and backward for a catwalk within the scorching Tuscan sunlight. There clearly was concerning the girl a sense of a person waiting.
I happened to be waiting too, reading a day-old newspaper that is english tilting contrary to the fender of the dented red Fiat. I’d been waiting around for a week for the license that was to never come, from the Procura Generale in Florence, to see the absolute most famous detainee in the jail. Roberto Polo was in fact arrested because of the Italian authorities the week before into the nearby seaside town of Viareggio, after a so-called effort, by wrist slashing, to commit committing committing suicide. Bleeding, thinking himself become dying, Polo had made farewell phone calls proclaiming his purity to a single of their investors in Mexico, to users of their family members, and also to a previous associate, the person that has set the truth against him in movement.
It happened in my experience, viewing the young woman, that people are there for the reason that is same. We offered http://www.mailorderbrides.us/ her my regular Mail, and she stated that she hadn’t seen a paper that is english times. She knew a lady whose title was at Nigel Dempster’s line. “She’s constantly when you look at the papers,” she said. We exchanged names, and it also ended up that we knew the caretaker of her stepsisters in nyc.
“Why are you here?” I inquired. We had stepped through rope curtains in to the color regarding the Caffи la Patria, a club and tobacco store next to the jail.
“I’m with individuals that are seeing somebody inside,” she said cautiously.
“Roberto Polo?” We asked.
“That’s why I’m right right here,” we said.
“I supposed you were,” she replied.
The week that is previous had made my presence and cause recognized to Gaetano Berni, the Florentine attorney retained by Polo’s family members. Berni had explained in my experience that Polo ended up being extradition that is fighting Switzerland. “It is way better for him to stay in Italy,” he had stated. “The Swiss will undoubtedly be harder on him. Besides, there clearly was evidence that is insufficient extradite him. He didn’t destroy. He did deal that is n’t medications. He’s perhaps perhaps perhaps not Mafia. Whilst the judge revealed, he had been maybe maybe not escaping as he ended up being arrested.”
My friend that is new Carr by title, ended up being the gf of Roberto Polo’s cousin, Marco, a banker in Milan, where she also lived. Early that morning she had driven Marco along with his daddy, Roberto Polo Sr., to Lucca in her own small car that is italian. Also when it comes to category of this kind of illustrious prisoner, visiting hours had been limited to 1 hour per week, on either Saturday or Sunday.