Witty Fort Lauderdale based philanthropist Michael Bienes passes away
Philanthropist Michael Bienes sadly died of cancer on 5th April according to the Sun Sentinel.
New York born Mr Bienes, a multi-millionaire many times over until falling prey to Bernard Madoff’s crooked Ponzi scheme, was known for hosting lavish parties and supported everything from the Holy Cross Hospital in Broward County to the Royal Opera House in London. He was generous to a tee and known for his dry sense of humour and wit.
The 80-year old, whose accountancy firm, Avellino & Bienes was an early feeder fund of Bernard L. Madoff Securities, leaves a widow, Dianne. She told the Sun Sentinel:
“Michael was never a man who would take advantage of anyone simply because he was always afraid of doing anything wrong. He loved people and valued the relationships he cultivated”.
Michael Bienes will be missed by many in both America and Britain. We offer our condolences to his wife and family.
TV drama film examining largest financial fraud ever by an individual set to air in May in America; ‘The Wizard of Lies’ examines the crimes of Bernard L. Madoff
On 20th May, Americans will finally be able to watch director Barry Levinson’s take on the crimes of the Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff when The Wizard of Lies airs on HBO.
Sentenced to 150 years for his £51.9 billion ($65 billion, €61.2 billion or درهم238.7 billion) crime, Madoff is played in the television drama film by Robert De Niro whilst Michelle Pfeiffer takes on the role of his wife, Ruth.
Two trailers have recently been released to international audiences and we share the most recent below. A date for the drama’s release in the UK is still to be announced.
A tenacious Romany Gypsy turned multi-millionaire businessman, Mayfair and Hertfordshire based Alfie Best overcame “many obstacles and prejudices” to make his fortune in cars, mobile phone stores and mobile home parks. The owner of Wyldecrest Parks also produces his own gin and claims his life philosophy is “90% perspiration and 10% inspiration”. His equally entrepreneurial son, Alfie Best III, appeared with him on Channel 4’s My Big Fat Gypsy Fortune.
Historic Battersea mansion for sale for the same sum it was marketed for in 2011; it has been mostly empty throughout the intervening period and was renovated by the late billionaire Malcolm Forbes
Billionaire publisher Malcolm Forbes was a man who liked to live large. He had a huge yacht named The Highlander, threw lavish parties across the globe and counted Gianni Agnelli, Gordon Getty, Calvin Klein, Robert Maxwell, Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump as friends. This “mysterious collector” also owned numerous residences and one of these, Old Battersea House in London, is for sale for the same sum as it was marketed for in 2011.
Often seen with Elizabeth Taylor at his side and described as “living life in the fabulous”, Forbes purchased Old Battersea House in 1971. It had previously been home to and saved from demolition by Battersea Council by the eccentric author and ghost hunter Wilhemina Stirling. She took up a lifetime tenancy on the building in 1931 and used it to house artworks by her sister, Evelyn de Morgan (1855 – 1919).
Grade II* listed since 1954 and adapted during Forbes and subsequently his son Kip’s ownership to showcase a vast collection of Victorian art and antiques, Old Battersea House was built on Tudor foundations in 1699 and was at first known as ‘Terrace House’. It originally had gardens extending down to the River Thames and is rumoured to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren (1632 – 1723).
Featuring “handsome classical proportions throughout” and standing within a 110-foot wide walled garden, the 10,100 square foot house includes 4 reception rooms, 10 double bedrooms and 7 bathrooms. It has off-street parking and a garden store but it is sadly overlooked by the adjoining housing estate that was built in its grounds in the 1930s.
The impressive hallway of Old Battersea HouseAnother entertaining spaceElizabeth Taylor and her then husband Larry Fortensky at Old Battersea House in 1992Images of the house as it was furnished during the ownership of the Forbes family
Georgian mansion, where Admiral Lord Nelson lived with his lover and her husband, for sale for £4.25 million; it was renovated by a former Nintendo executive
One would expect a senior executive of a tech company to live in a slick, modern home in Silicon Valley, but since 2004, Matthew Hill, for many years a senior manager at Nintendo, has called a Grade II listed manor house named Fir Hill in Hampshire’s Meon Valley home.
Built in 1765 and the scene of one of the most famous ménages à trois in history when home to Sir William Hamilton, his wife Emma and Admiral Horatio, 1st Viscount Nelson in 1801 to 1802, the 7,905 square foot “Georgian masterpiece” includes 3 reception rooms, 7 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. It stands in 5.2 acres of land and comes with a two-storey stable block with potential for secondary accommodation.
Mr Hill purchased the property from Mrs Vida Schreiber, previously Lady Clive, after the death of her husband, Brigadier Schreiber. He met intellectual property lawyer Georgy Evans in 2007 and married her in St Mary and All Saints church in Droxford in 2012 and in the time since, aside from completing the renovation of Fir Hill, the couple have worked together creating a website that comprehensively details the entire history of the building.
Of the renovation and why they are now selling, Matthew Hill told Hampshire Life:
“The renovation work took us 10 years on and off. Our architect said, you either have a big bang and not live here for two years or work in phases. We decided to do the work in four phases which meant we could live here, moving around the house as each phase was completed. The experience of living in the house helped with the restoration… It’s a lovely house, with a lovely feeling, but too big for the two of us now”.
Fir Hill is for sale for £4.25 million ($5.17 million, €4.87 million or درهم19.07 million) through Christie’s Real Estate.
That a convicted paedophile is able to avoid a jail sentence is an utter disgrace especially given pensioners get locked up for non-payment of TV licence fees; Old Etonian Andrew Picard shouldn’t be on the streets, he should be in the clink
Andrew Picard (AKA Andrew Laurence and Andrew Boeckman) was caught with 1,185 indecent images of children as young as eight on his computer. He admitted to possessing videos of a three year old being raped, children being forced to have sex with dogs and sharing indecent images on Skype with an undercover policeman yet he was spared jail and handed a derisory non-custodial sentence late last month.
Justifying why he spared Picard of Probyn House, Page Street, Westminster jail and why he also decided not to place this privileged pervert and predator on the sex offenders’ register, Judge Peter Ross remarked:
“It has been said that you and your family have suffered deeply as a result of your arrest and public exposure. Your family didn’t deserve that… [Prison] would undo the counseling you have undergone”.
Sallie Bennett-Jenkins QC, defending, added:
“This is a young and very able man who has hopes for the future… He was able to have this opportunity [to seek help] and this was something Andrew sought for himself, by himself”.
Vast Knightsbridge penthouse with two terraces and a double garage for sale for a sum 478% higher than it achieved in 2000
A penthouse across three buildings in Knightsbridge that sold for £5.1 million (the equivalent of £7.9 million, $9.6 million, €9 million or درهم 35.3 million today) in November 2000 has gone on the market for the much increased sum of £29.5 million ($35.9 million, €33.6 million or درهم 131.8 million).
Exterior of 23–25 Lowndes Square, Knightsbridge, London, SW1X 9HD
Featuring 16 windows overlooking a mature communal garden and a gross internal area of 6,215 square foot, The Penthouse at 23 to 25 Lowndes Square has six bedrooms, two roof terraces and private garaging for two cars. It is offered on a 992 year lease with a share of the freehold and is subject to a whopping annual service charge of £50,576 per year ($61,525, €57,635 or درهم 225,982).
As San Francisco socialite and clothes horse Joy Venturini Bianchi is highlighted to be an American version of her fellow former ‘charitycat’ Lady Meyer, it’s time that charities worldwide were better regulated
In Britain, in 2011, the “Chanel-clad” wife of the former British ambassador to Washington, Lady Meyer, faced criticism after The Telegraph revealed the majority of the income of the charity she was then running was spent on her very own pay. She subsequently ceased to be involved in that organisation in 2016 but now, in San Francisco, a similar scandal has come to light in the form of Helpers Community Inc. (formerly rather crudely known as ‘Helpers of the Mentally Retarded’) and its executive director, a wannabe lookalike of Iris Apfel named Joy Venturini Bianchi.
The so-called charity that “natty” Ms. Venturini Bianchi, a self-proclaimed “divorced philanthropist” runs, it was reported last Friday, must “repay the public tens of thousands of dollars after misleading city officials” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The same paper had previously highlighted that Helpers had paid 78-year old Venturini Bianchi a base salary of £159,149 ($193,828), roughly £82,109 ($100,000) more annually than directors of similarly sized San Francisco non-profits and that supporters had been “disgusted with the way they were using this cause to raise money”.
Ms. Venturini Bianchi stands accused of raising “millions of dollars but failed to adequately distribute [them]” and that she is also attacked for not doing “much to fulfill [her non-profit’s] promise to donors” is, if correct, truly shocking. Just as with Meyer in England, the board of Helpers was composed from “longtime friends” and as state senator Mark Leno pointed out: “It would appear that the board is in need of a serious governance makeover”.
It is time the era of the ‘charitycat’ came to its natural conclusion. In Britain, America and elsewhere, for far too long, wealthy and connected individuals with little-to-no experience have been able to benefit from tax breaks, benefits, salaries and bonuses naïvely given by the public simply by taking over “a cause”. These amateurs should now be banished and running charities should instead become the domain of professionals.
Grade II* listed Kent manor house for sale for £3.95 million; the purchaser will get a controversial £107.9 million EuroMillions jackpot winner as their neighbour
Sold last in 2009 for £1.9 million (the equivalent of £2.3 million, $2.8 million, €2.2 million or درهم 10.3 million today), Waystrode Manor at Cowden, near Edenbridge in Kent is a Grade II* listed manor house.
For sale currently for £3.95 million ($4.81 million, €4.56 million or درهم 17.65 million) through Savills, the main 4,435 square foot house dates back as far, perhaps, as 1208. The present Tudor residence includes 4 reception rooms, 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, but aside from that there is a 3 bedroom cottage, a converted oast house providing a recreation space, a Grade II listed double vaulted timber frame barn, an orangery and a coach house.
Within the 7.8 acres of formal and informal gardens and grounds of this attractive, restored property – which has been offered as a film and photo shoot location through the JJ Media agency – there is also an outdoor swimming pool, a hard tennis court, three ponds and an orchard.
Though the eventual purchaser of Waystrode Manor will of course be a multi-millionaire, they will most likely not be nearly as rich as their controversial neighbours, Neil Trotter and his partner Nikki Ottaway. Mr Trotter won £107.9 million ($131.4million, €124.6 million or درهم 482.4 million) on the EuroMillions lottery in 2014 and subsequently bought the adjoining 423-acre estate, Leighton Manor, for £5 million ($6.1 million, €5.8 million or درهم 22.4 million). In 2016, Trotter and Ottaway were “slammed” in the national press by locals after installing what was termed an “unsightly” barbed wire fence.
Neil Trotter was a garage mechanic before he won a EuroMillions jackpot
Bentley 4×4 equipped with fly fishing kit by Mulliner to be exhibited at The London Fly Fishing Fair
Designed with the gentleman angler in mind, what some might call a “casting brake” is to be exhibited by Bentley at the first London Fly Fishing Fair this week.
Priced far higher than the standard £135,000 ($164,000, €155,000 or درهم 603,000) base model Bentley Bentayga at around £280,000 ($340,000, €322,000 or درهم 1.25 million), the Mulliner Fly Fishing adapted version on show comes with a master tackle station, a refreshment case and a waterproof wader stowage trunk. It has tubes for four rods and a pair of landing nets can be stored in a hard pocket in the side of the boot.
Aside from the specially adapted Bentley, Marina Gibson – pictured here departing from a slightly more modest means of transport – will add some glamour to the first London Fly Fishing Fair
Of the car, which is to be exhibited by Mayfair dealers Jack Barclay, John Kelley, co-founder of The London Fly Fishing Fair, remarked:
“This is an iconic development in the fishing industry. It allows the keen angler to travel in comfort and in style. We are proud to be having this vehicle be a part of our fair, where we hope to entice a diverse community of fly fishers to engage in our event”.
Fly fishing personalities including rising star Marina Gibson and longstanding favourite Charles Jardine will be present at the fair and amongst over 70 exhibitors will be the Atlantic Salmon Trust, the BASC and Orvis.
The London Fly Fishing Fair is to be held on the 10th and 11th March at The Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, Islington, London, N1 0QH. Tickets cost £15 per person with under entry for those under 15 free.
