KEY POINTS:
Someone somewhere presumably advised Anne Hathaway, the star of the summer hit Get Smart, to do precisely that. Her boyfriend of several years still had that raffish European charm that had conquered her in the first place, but the warning signs surrounding him had become too numerous to ignore.
Nobody but Hathaway is privy to the doings of her heart. But it was never much of a secret that the man she had held closest to it for a long time was Raffaello Follieri, a foppish Italian businessman with an aristocratic swagger and wallet to match. Nor did it take long for the gossip writers to pass on the news when the couple finally broke up last week. Never has the ending of an affair been timelier.
Today, much of what made the young man so exotic to so many people - his alleged ties to the Vatican and to the Pope himself, his friendships with billionaire investors (and one former American president) and his own wealth - is available for all to peruse in a document that is unflattering both in origin and content. It is called United States of America versus Raffaello Follieri (Defendant).
That the newly single Follieri, 29, was in a world of trouble must have become obvious to him when the authorities busted into his opulent 5th Avenue apartment on Wednesday and put him in handcuffs. Before the day was out, he would find himself charged in court with multiple counts of financial fraud with the prospect, if found guilty, of being placed behind bars for up to nine years.
It was a very bad day indeed, which ended with a New York judge setting bail for his release pending trial at an astonishing US$21 million ($27 million), most of it to be paid in cash. Assuming he can raise the money, Follieri will have to remain in his apartment save for short excursions for legal, medical or religious reasons. The court business done, he promptly collapsed and was rushed to a nearby hospital.
Follieri, whose medical condition and whereabouts remained unclear yesterday, is accused of bilking millions from unsuspecting investors in the United States on false pretences and using some of the money to fund an extravagant lifestyle of high-end digs (the apartment on an upper floor of the Trump Tower costs US$37,000 a month in rent), and, of course, an entirely high-end girlfriend, whose other recent film credits include a role alongside Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.
His purported scam involved raising money to buy properties being sold by the Roman Catholic Church in the US and redeveloping them for handsome profits.
He was able to attract serious investors because of his claim that he had an inside track with the Vatican in Rome that would give him first refusal on the properties and the chance to buy them at steeply discounted prices.
He would eventually come to describe himself as the Vatican's chief financial officer, with the ear of Pope Benedict XVI himself.
The trouble with all of this, according to federal prosecutors and court documents, is that nothing he said about his ties with the Holy See was true. Follieri, boomed District Attorney Reed Brodsky in court, "is a conman. He was able to con a lot of people out of a lot of money and did it over a long period of time. He was able to deceive everyone from the most sophisticated investor to the naive person." He told the court that "the evidence in this case is overwhelming".
According to the complaint, as much as US$6 million raised by Follieri for the property portfolio instead went towards maintaining himself, his family and Hathaway in the manner to which they had become accustomed. Prosecutors claim that in late 2005, Follieri used US$107,000 of the allegedly stolen money to fly himself and Hathaway on a private jet to the Dominican Republic. There, the couple were said to have attended a party at the house of Oscar de la Renta in the company of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Follieri apparently went to some lengths to sustain the illusion of his Vatican inside track, even keeping ceremonial robes in his office.
The 12-page complaint describes the principle investor in Follieri's enterprises as "a private equity investment company with its headquarters in California". It was widely identified in the US media as the Yukaipa Companies of Los Angeles, an investment concern founded by the California supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, who is a long-time friend and former business associate of Bill Clinton. Indeed, it was through a top aide to the former president, Douglas Band, that Follieri got his initial introduction to Burkle.
The criminal charges against Follieri appear closely to track a civil lawsuit that Burkle filed against him last year.
The suit, which was settled out of court, accused Follieri of misusing funds provided by Burkle for the purposes of property investment on personal extravagancies. Even Bill Clinton has suffered the short end of Follieri, who was invited on stage at an annual meeting of the former president's global charitable foundation and thanked for the US$50 million he had personally pledged to it. The cheque, however, has never been forthcoming.
In April, Follieri was arrested on charges that were later dropped relating to writing a bad cheque for more than US$200,000 to a business associate. Reports also surfaced first concerning the non-payment of nearly half a million dollars to the American Express bank, and the opening by New York State authorities of an investigation into alleged tax shortcomings related to charitable activities.
Of course, it's possible Hathaway gave him the boot because he snored, slept with another woman or trod on her cat. We may never know, and never care. But we do know this: she's better off out of it.
- INDEPENDENT
