Billionaire Edmond Safra Had An Immense Net Worth – How Did the Banker Die?

People are curious about billionaire Edmond Safra and his net worth after the Netflix documentary Murder in Monaco premiered on Dec. 17, 2025.

Edmond was a very wealthy Lebanese-Brazilian banker who died a mysterious death, along with one of his nurses, Vivian Torrente, back in 1999. So, what was his net worth?

Edmond was born in Lebanon to Jacob and Esther Safra. Jacob opened the J. E. Safra Bank back in 1920 in Beirut, and Edmond worked in the financial institution as a teen. After the family moved to Brazil in the 1950s, Jacob and Edmond founded their first financial institution in the country. Edmond opened a private bank in Geneva a few years later, and he opened the Republic National Bank of New York back in 1966.

In the 1990s, his estimated net worth was $2.5 billion, and he had financial institutions in Monaco, Luxembourg, and Switzerland at the time of his death. Edmond sold his holdings in the Republic New York Corporation and Safra Republic Holdings to a London-based HSBC back in 1999 for a reported $10.3 billion.

Edmond was just 67 when he died from smoke inhalation in 1999 after a fire broke out in his penthouse in Monte Carlo, Monaco, per The New York Times. An American nurse, Ted Maher, was convicted of starting the fire that killed the billionaire and another nurse, Vivian Torrente. The banker had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and needed around-the-clock care.

Maher was alone at the nursing station when he claimed that two hooded intruders had broken into the penthouse, and he told Vivian to barricade herself and Edmond in the panic room inside the bathroom and to call the authorities. Unfortunately, they were both dead by the time the firefighters and police arrived on the scene. The male nurse later admitted that he set the fire in a wastebasket and faked an attack on himself because he'd been mistreated by his superiors and scared to lose his job.

He admitted to starting the fire so he could rescue Edmond and be a hero, but the fire spread too quickly, and he couldn't put it out before it spread out of control, per The Guardian.

"I couldn't believe that such a terrible tragedy came from such a small fire," he said in court. "What's happened is and always will be a terrible accident."

Maher spent eight years in jail for the crime, but he said that had the police not delayed the firefighters from entering the building, the victims would still have been alive. However, the delay was due to the police believing two violent burglars were still in the building.

Conspiracy theories about the deaths included the Russian Mafia because Edmond worked with the FBI to expose money laundering at his bank by Russians. Drug cartels and terrorist conspiracy theories were also rumored to be responsible for the deaths.

Years after his release, Maher broke into the office of his ex-wife, Kim Lark, and stole a gun, her checkbook, and $600 in cash. He also tried to write a check to himself for $44,000, but the former Green Beret was arrested after he returned to kidnap her three dogs.

While behind bars, per Biography. The former nurse paid another inmate to kill Kim and take her money. He was convicted of solicitation to commit first-degree murder in March of 2025.