Monaco

"work. In his mind’s eye he could see Monte Carlo awakening from the unnatural slumber and reverting to the glory of the past. One of his exciting visions was of a new outer harbor big enough to accom¬ modate the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth and attracting a big international cruising clientele. There was not a port in the Mediter¬ ranean capable of taking big passenger liners without subjecting them to the noise, smoke, and dirt of a commercial harbor, as in Genoa, Naples, Marseilles, or Barcelona. In Villefranche and Cannes the swell was so strong that it was impossible to embark or disembark pas¬ sengers during more than six hours at a time. Onassis visualized oceangoing liners coming in like yachts and staying while their pas¬ sengers flew on quick excursions to Paris, London, Rome, anywhere in Europe. It would put Monte Carlo among the great international harbors of the world and, he reckoned, attract two thousand visitors to Monaco every day. A man whose visions quickly solidify into hard figures, he worked out that even at twenty-five dollars a head a day, even without gambling, this represented a secure income of fifty thou¬ sand dollars a day. The project might require an investment of at least thirty million dollars but this was not an amount to deter Onassis."

"In 1949 he gets on a bicycle and every morning crosses the city to work at Johnson, which has been making medals in Porta Nuova for over a century. In the evening, he specializes at the Brera Academy, where the owner gives him the chance to grow, to refine his own drawing skills. Leonardo is in a hurry to move on. The rest is history: that of the orphan who for years becomes Italy's top taxpayer, only to later choose Monaco for residence and Luxembourg as the fiscal seat for his holding."

"When it came to his abode in the south of France, Sol really had some amazing luck. His villa was perched on a hillside on the ocean side of the lower corniche between Beaulieu and Monte Carlo. This heavily trafficked road was a major link between Monaco and Nice. One day, Sol came home to find a huge tunnel-boring truck parked a hundred metres up the road. The authorities had decided to build a tunnel through the mountain, diverting the main road and leaving the old road as a personal drive to Sol’s villa and his only neighbour’s. This unexpected move from the provincial government instantly added millions of euro to the value of Sol’s property."

"When shipowners choose flags, the degree of protection against intrusive tax officials is a criterion. Then so-called bearer’s shares, or bearer stocks, are good to have. The person who holds the share certificates in hand owns the company. And when the papers are in a safe deposit box in Switzerland or perhaps Monaco, it is not so easy to find out who actually has the keys to the safe deposit box."

"Glamour and publicity now followed Gibbs at every turn. He had a new girlfriend, the beautiful French Tahitian Sandra Baker, and was enjoying life. A great story on the car appeared in the August 2004 edition of *Top Gear* magazine, based on an interview with Paul Walton in Monaco. ‘Splash and Dash’ was the headline. ‘Making an entrance at the Monaco Grand Prix gets trickier every year,’ Walton wrote. ‘The Ferraris, the yachts, the helicopters — it’s all so depressingly uninspired. But the amphibious Gibbs Aquada, now that’s a toy that’ll get them rubbernecking.’ Driving through Monaco, Walton observed that the Aquada received more attention ‘than all the resident supercars put together’.[24](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477408-606132179-24)"