Word: rubinsteins
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Serge was manager of the tiny Banque Franco-Asiatique in Paris, which was the French financial agent for the Chinese government. Rubinstein discovered that a series of old, defaulted Chinese bonds were due to mature shortly, and quietly bought up a million dollars worth for $25,000. When the Chinese government forwarded more than a million dollars to cover interest payments on another series of bonds. Rubinstein simply paid off on the defaulted series, which rose automatically in value. "I had the bonds," he explained later, "and I had the money. I just paid myself off." For this kind...
...French authorities told Serge to leave the country because of his shady financial transactions. Serge had another version: Premier Pierre Laval, he said, suspected Rubinstein of dallying with his mistress, a French marquise, and deported him in a fit of jealousy. Two years before his expulsion, he had got hold of operating control of the Chosen Corp., a British company which owned some Korean gold mines. It was a typically slippery operation. The company was in the midst of a management scandal (the director ultimately went off to Wormwood Scrubs prison), and the stock was momentarily cheap. Before Serge made...
...Rubinstein arrived in the U.S. with a Portuguese passport which he had obtained in Shanghai for $2,000. He swore later that he was the bastard result of a premarital liaison between his mother, a Portuguese citizen (she was not) and his father, and was therefore entitled to citizenship under a Portuguese law protecting the love children of natives. Brother André promptly sued for defamation of their mother's character...
...Rubinstein continued his rascally ways, and his ill-gotten fortune grew. He was sued or charged with everything from swindling to a Mann Act violation (with a blonde on a Caribbean cruise). He hired the best available legal talent, e.g., Connecticut's late Senator Brien McMahon, and paid double fees when he was acquitted. Sometimes, his friendship proved embarrassing: in 1943 the nomination of Ed Flynn, the late Democratic boss of the Bronx, to be Minister to Australia, was withdrawn after his legal associations with Rubinstein were revealed in the Senate...
...life Rubinstein and his money attracted swarms of women, most of them beautiful and taller by several inches than the squat, 5-ft. 7-in. Serge. In 1941 he married Laurette Kilborn, a redheaded model from Flushing, L.I. After their wedding, in Alexandria, Va., Rubinstein gave a lavish reception at Washington's Shoreham Hotel, inviting 150 eminent friends. Nine ambassadors and a murmuration of Senators and Congressmen dutifully turned up to toast the bride and groom...