For ages many of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful have preferred secrecy to a more public limelight. For reasons, both obvious and not, this has been especially true during times of economic hardship. We take a look behind the curtains to expose some of our modern day Medicis. What we find is a bit more than your typical skeletons in the closet.

Steven A. Cohen
Greenwich, CT

Esimated Net Worth: $7 billion

Business Week has called Cohen “the most powerful trader on Wall Street you’ve never heard of.” With 700 employees and $13 billion under management, Cohen’s hedge fund, SAC Capital, has become the most talked-about (albeit, least visible) force on Wall Street. His net worth is estimated at just under $7 billion with compensation reaching as high as $1 billion in recent years. Yet when it comes to secrecy this king maker prefers the trading desk to the throne. Cohen refuses to be interviewed or photographed. His aversion to press extends as far as purchasing all media rights to publish his photographs. His $15 million mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut is surrounded by 12-foot-high walls equipped with an extensive motion sensor alarm system. And Cohen’s penchant for secrecy doesn’t stop at his personal life. Trades at his hedge fund, some netting up to hundreds of millions of dollars in an industry already well known for its secrecy, allows his balances to go unaccounted for by anyone but his associates. Insiders say he requires employees to sign dense confidentiality agreements to protect the firm’s strategies and information. It comes as no secret why. Cohen’s methods have returned him and his investors an annual return of 30 percent and above over the last decade.

David Rockefeller
New York, NY

Esimated Net Worth: ?

At a measly $2.6 billion, one suspects that Forbes magazine and others have grossly underestimated this Rockefeller’s fortune. The same could be said of his influence. The American plutocrat shares ties with some of the world’s most exclusive and secretive organizations. Journalist Bill Moyers has called Rockefeller “the unelected if indisputable chairman of the American Establishment” and “one of the most powerful, influential and richest men in America.” Rockefeller’s private activities do little to challenge this notion. Rockefeller hosts an annual luncheon at the family’s Westchester County Pocantico estate for the world’s appointed finance ministers and central bank governors. Even Caesar could not assemble a more influential group. Other activities include founding the internationalist organization the Trilateral Commission which has counted Gerald Ford, George Bush Sr. and Henry Kissinger as its members. A leading shareholder of Standard Oil successor Exxon-Mobil and former Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank, Rockefeller has also served as the youngest director and later chairman of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, a top-heavy private discussion forum that is considered by some to be the most powerful closed organization influencing US foreign policy. Today his role has been reduced to a meager honorary chairman. In addition to founding and serving on the steering committees of the elite Bilderberg conference, he has counted present and past world leaders, from Khrushchev to Gorbachev, Mubarak to Hussein (Saddam and the King), as friends. In one way or another he has counted four of the past World Bank Presidents on his payroll. Yet for all his influence and power, Rockefeller prefers the backroom to public office. He has refused positions of US Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Chairman, both offered to him by Democratic President Jimmy Carter (Rockefeller is an avid Republican), as well as a standing New York Senate seat, offered to him by his brother, Nelson Rockefeller. And despite occasional public appearances, much remains unknown about the larger than life figure. His only published account, Memoirs, leaves unanswered questions on every page. The only way of deciphering the details of this extraordinary man’s life remain locked up in the Rockefeller Archive Center at Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate. At present the archives are closed to everyone, including researchers and historians.

Boris Berezovsky
Moscow, Russia (hiding in London)

Esimated Net Worth: $1.1 billion

In Russia, a country where crime pays (a lot), secrecy is a rule, not an exception. Boris Berzovsky is case and point. The man, described by critics as the epitome of “robber capitalism,” rose to prominence during the era of Yeltsin’s Perestroika, a Russian rush to free market capitalism. Counted as one of President Yeltsin’s trusted advisors and member of his inner circle, or “family”, Berezovsky was well positioned to exploit government resources then being allayed into private hands. For all his services, Berezovsky walked away with billions of formerly state owned assets. And aside from illicit business activities, Berezovsky has more than enough reason for preferring secrecy. He has been allegedly tied to a number of high profile murders and scandals including the murder of critics of the Putin regime FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko and journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Russian authorities accuse Berzovsky of being involved in the murders in an attempt to discredit Putin. And eight years after publishing the article and book ”Godfather of the Kremlin”, a scathing attack on Berezovsky that portrayed him as a mafia boss who had his rivals murdered, the author, Paul Klebnikov, editor of Forbes’ Russian edition, was gunned down on a Moscow street. Surely, Berezovsky and others in the Russian criminal establishment couldn’t have been happier. In a country where tax evasion is almost universal and collectors carry AKA rifles, trained more for urban combat than accounting balances, the exposure Forbes provided to ill-gotten gains was less than comforting. To this date no evidence has been found or witnesses have testified to any of the charges brought against Berezovsky. Nevertheless, arrest warrants for fraud, embezzlement and money laundering remain outstanding for the Oligarch in Russia and Brazil, and investigations are ongoing by the Swiss Bundesanwaltschaft. Whether he likes it or not his activities will remain underground.

Valery Kogan
Moscow, Russia

Esimated Net Worth: ?

No one seems to know just precisely how much Mr. Kogan is worth. Just in the past few months the Wall Street Journal and New York magazine have cited him as a billionaire while Bloomberg and the New York Sun have counted him as a millionaire. He is found nowhere on the Forbes list. And in 2007 Russian magazine Finans showed him in 499th place on the list of the richest people in Russia, worth $90 million, only a year later to bump him up to 157th place, at $600 million. Yet despite all the obfuscation there is little question that Kogan’s wealth ranks with the largest of Russia’s titans and billionaires. The mysterious tycoon caused an uncharacteristic uproar in April when the city of Greenwich (average housing price: $2.4 million) rejected his proposal to buy an $18 million home, tear it down, and build what would be the biggest home ever built in the Connecticut enclave - a 27,000 square foot supermansion. And the Connecticut spree was just the beginning. Just one month earlier he finished purchasing a sizeable beachfront lot in Israel, combining 5 neighboring properties, for about $17 million (he plans to renovate the lot to the tune of $50 million according to Russian sources). Curiously, until these gigantic stories made press, Kogan was virtually unknown. And for all the attention Kogan received for his housing binge, the press was unanimous in being unable to track the source of Kogan’s explosive wealth. One detail that emerged from the pits of press speculation was that Kogan had served as chairman of the East Line, a company that operates Domodedovo International Airport, Russia’s largest airport in terms of passenger and cargo traffic. Yet much still remains unknown. The Jerusalem Post has regurgitated rumors that Kogan is connected to the secret services in Russia and close to former president Vladimir Putin. And many Russian sources speculate that Kogan’s recent world travels had less to do with jet setting and more to do with finding tax safe havens for his largely unaccounted-for fortune. Fearing run ins with tax and criminal authorities, it is well known that many Russian billionaires refuse to step into the spotlight. Yet the little glimpse we have gotten of Kogan suggests he is a king standing in the shadows.

Nadhmi Auchi
London, England

Esimated Net Worth: $4 billion

Auchi shares a peculiar background worthy of secrecy. Born in Baghdad, Nadhmi got his start by joining Iraq’s Ba’ath party in the 1960s, the party that later infamously ruled Iraq with an iron grip under Saddam Hussein. There Auchi worked his way into the Ministry of Oil before fleeing his home country at the onset of the Iran-Iraq War. While Nadhmi denies ever having any links to Saddam (he claims he was jailed when the party came to power in 1963) today he shares ties with some of the world’s richest and most powerful. Allegedly in the entrance to his plush London office hangs a painting presented to Auchi in 1999 by Tony Blair accompanied by a card signed by an unprecedented 130 Members of the British Parliament. Inside his office are also pictures of the billionaire with former American president Bill Clinton and vice-president Al Gore, and an array of Middle East leaders and royalty. Yet the precise nature of Auchi’s business remains elusive and why he requires such a great political attaché remains a mystery. His firm, General Mediterranean Holdings SA (GMH SA), is stated to be ”based in Luxembourg, with offices in London, and has business interests in banking, hotels, construction and real estate.” Yet it is believed that his holdings are far more diverse, sharing ownership in more than 120 companies across the world from British aviation to Kuwaiti energy. For all he is worth, secrecy appears to be a mainstay of Auchi’s business. When in the 1980s socialists took power in France ordering all banks to pass information on the accounts of their customers to the government, it was Auchi’s firm in conjunction with the French bank Paribas that enabled accounts for the super wealthy to remain secret by purchasing a bank in Luxembourg. Later Auchi took a controlling interest in Banque Nationale de Paris which later merged with Paribas to become BNP Paribas, the bank of choice for Saddam Hussein when funneling billions of dollars of often corrupt Oil for Food transactions. In 2003 Auchi was convicted by a French court of illegally accepting more than $120 million in oil kickbacks during the first Gulf War, oddly enough profiting from the Kuwaiti side. And to this date Auchi continues to attract mystery if not controversy. Auchi is the primary financial sponsor of Tony Rezko, wiring $3.5 million to the Syrian-American just one month before the Rezkos purchased land adjacent to Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s home (some speculate Obama received part of the property at a discount). Both properties were sold by the same seller. Rezko, an early and substantial fundraiser for Obama, has since been convicted of fraud and bribery and has become a source of endless pain for the Obama campaign. Perhaps Rezko could have learned a thing or two from Auchi.

Lord Jacob Rothschild
London, England

Estimated Net Worth: $100 billion+

For ages mystery has shrouded the famous Rothschild banking family of Europe. The family has sustained its empire by denying heiresses control of the family fortune while emphasizing family unity. The eldest patriarch, Jacob, appears to be continuing the tradition. From his headquarters in St James’s Place in London, Rothschild has cultivated an influential set of clients, business associates and friends who extend his interests far beyond the normal scope of any banker. His country estate has been a regular venue for visiting heads of state including Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. In 1990 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher received French President François Mitterrand there at a summit. He hosted the European Economic Round Table conference in 2002, attended by Warren Buffett and Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others. He was a close personal friend of the late Diana, Princess of Wales and maintains strong personal and business links with Henry Kissinger. More recently, the Lord hosted an invite only fundraiser at his estate for Presidential nominee John McCain. Tickets to the invitation-only event, ranging in cost from $1,000 to $2,300, raised eyebrows in Washington as the London banker walked fine lines amid American campaign finance laws that limit foreigners from donating to presidential candidates (in any form). Yet even for this pseudo-public persona, much remains a mystery. The holding company which bares many of the Rothschild assets, the Rothschild Continuation Holdings Co., is Swiss-based allowing assets to remain locked away in private accounts. The Financial Times recently noted a sale from this holding company would require special treatment including an ”agreement on the valuation of privately held assets whose value has never been tested in a public market. Most of these assets are held in a complex network of tax-efficient structures around the World.” While secrecy is a challenge for anyone of such stature, it doesn’t hurt that the Rothschilds’ share interests in some of the world most important media publications. Included in this portfolio is perhaps the most influential publication in the Western world, the Economist (owned by the Economist Group, an associate of the Financial Times), a publication read by everyone from corporate titans to heads of state. Add to bare that Jacob is the Deputy Chairman of British Sky Broadcasting Group plc (alongside Rupert Murdoch) and sits next to former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on the illustrious board of private equity mammoth Blackstone Group, and Rothschild has enough avenues to ensure his fame and fortune are secure from any public scrutiny.

Note: While Blackstone has recently gone public, exposing more of the company’s dealings to public scrutiny, its limited partners are allowed to remain private.

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