DE BECKER, founder of Gavin de Becker & Associates, a security consulting firm based in Los Angeles, penned this document in response to the Prince’s new settlement condition that he not recognize Jazmin as his daughter until her 18th birthday, four years hence.
In his fourteen-page missile, DE BECKER essentially declared war: If the Prince did not recognize Jazmin and meet with her very quickly, he, DE BECKER, would use all his power and influence to make Jazmin the poster child for abandoned children everywhere.
Jazmin, he stated, would write a book for global consumption, and DE BECKER would personally ensure that she got onto Oprah WINFREY's popular television show, and Larry King Live, among others, to blacken the Prince’s name globally as the world’s worst deadbeat dad.
A top literary agent, DE BECKER wrote, had already been consulted on this project and was foaming at the mouth to get started.
DE BECKER continued:
Perhaps a book written by a 14 year-old (her age itself being a powerful and intriguing factor) might express the heart of the matter.
Once a reader or reviewer or interviewer gets past the fact that this particular abandoning father is one of the world’s most famous monarchs, we are left with a girl’s experience that can enlighten and help many people. It’s a common story: A father knows his daughter exists yet doesn’t care for her, meet her, or even acknowledge her.
Why did that happen in Albert’s case, since he could have supported her even if he chose not to know her? We’re told that his father prohibited it. While one can readily accept the pressures and repressions of a public royal life, a few thousand miles away from Monaco is a young girl who knew nothing of politics, pressures, and repression. She knew only that her father had no interest in her. In the current situation, she watches as the negotiations indicate that her father wishes she didn’t exist at all—he actually seeks to require her by contract to be the Invisible Girl or else suffer continued financial stress.
This very week, her birthday week, she reads more denials of her existence in the news, quotes from her father about it being “impossible” she is his daughter—public statements made on the very day she is being pressured to sign an agreement. Another news story has a quote from her father characterizing those who make claims of paternity as “jumping on the bandwagon.”
…I had a clear vision of Jazmin on Oprah’s Show (a client and friend of mine) and on Larry King (whom I know well), and being interviewed in Time and Newsweek—not about Albert as a monarch, but about a girl’s experience when her father elects to un-know and invisibilize her.
…A problem your lawyers now face is that they have only one thing to negotiate with: Money. But compensatory money cannot compensate for unlove, or a father wanting her to disappear.
Essentially, DE BECKER threatened the Prince with this ultimatum: Recognize Jazmin or face the public relations nightmare of your life.
The Prince heard about this letter while traveling in Austria.
LACOSTE reacted by blaming everyone but himself, prompting the Prince to phone me and request that I “leave it to the legal boys.”
But three days after asking the Prince to request that I stay out of the Jazmin matter, LACOSTE telephoned me and requested I re-insert himself into the equation.
Specifically, LACOSTE asked me to investigate Tamara ROTOLO’s media contacts in some hare-brained scheme to demonstrate that public exposure had always been her intent, which I knew to be untrue.
In fact, ROTOLO had been striving to shield Jazmin from the media.
Yet even if LACOSTE’s theory held true, it would certainly not be a defense against the media extravaganza DE BECKER now threatened, and seemed prepared and very able to implement.
So yet again, LACOSTE demonstrated incompetence that brought potential new embarrassment to the Sovereign Prince.
When I next saw the Prince (March 16th), Albert said that he thought DE BECKER’s letter was “soppy.” But it nonetheless accomplished its objective: The Prince finally agreed to meet Jazmin, a father-daughter rendezvous scheduled for one week hence in Paris, and also agreed to officially recognize Jazmin as his daughter, albeit under duress.
I reminded the Prince to wish Jazmin a happy birthday in case he’d forgotten (he had) as she had just turned 14 on March 4th. Thus, crisis averted—by default, which was how the oft-distracted and indecisive Prince finally "made" decisions.
Some context is necessary here:
Prince Albert's father, Prince Rainier, never allowed Albert to recognize paternity of Jazmin.
Rainier never even knew about Albert's illegitimate son, Alexandre COSTE. In fact, it had been Albert's worst nightmare that Rainier would one day find out.
So Albert secretly supported Alexandre financially while Rainier was still alive to prevent the boy's mother, Nicole COSTE, from going public.
After Rainier's death, Albert's lawyer, LACOSTE, allegedly cut off Alexandre's financial support after Nicole COSTE demanded that Albert officially recognize his son. Nicole's cousin sold her story to Bunte, the German magazine, and the resulting bad publicity throughout the world compelled Albert to recognize their son.
Meanwhile, Jazmin and her mother watched from California in despair as Albert recognized a second illegitimate child born many years after Jazmin. They began to initiate court proceedings in France to compel Albert to provide child support, and this is what prompted the Prince to financial settlement, on the basis that Jazmin remain hidden until her 18th birthday.
On the evening of March 10th, I met with Claude PALMERO, the Palace accountant, for a drink at Fusion. I wished to convey that they were on the same team, the Prince’s team; that he would willingly include PALMERO should he desire a (Walter Mitty) role in the Prince’s intelligence service.
But PALMERO’s cold, stiff demeanor never softened a moment.
Instead, it became clear within minutes that Palmero’s sympathies lay with Franck BIANCHERI, whom he described as “destroyed and devastated” by the Palace’s plan to remove him as finance minister.
PALMERO was convinced BIACHERI’s “enemies--Stephane VALERI and Enrico BRAGGIOTTI--set him up”--and that the Palace caved to the power of media. (BRAGGIOTTI's weekly newsmagazine, L’Observateur, had called attention to a few of the finance minister’s unethical transgressions.)
PALMERO complained that VALERI wanted to be the first Monegasque minister of state—and that BIANCHERI was his only competition.
And PALMERO voiced a personal reason for his displeasure: His own father, implicated in a Monaco postage stamp scandal, suffered a heart attack and died at the age of sixty-eight. “The stress, the humiliation—it killed him,” PALMERO told me, adding that BIANCHERI was going through the same thing. As for the behavior that led to BIANCHERI’s shame: “His dealings were in the context of the times,” explained PALMERO.
Cultural Acceptance Level: Did I really think, more important, did Prince Albert really think Monaco could wash away a history of corruption and dirty financial dealings?