Paradise Island, the Bahamas.

Hello? Hello, Victor? Hello? Hi, I'm a journalist, and I'm trying to find one of your neighbors and wanted to see if you could help me find him. It's a fellow named Victor Kajani. He's got red hair. He's a white man, round face and curly hair.

This place looks like a down at the Hills Motel. Two stories, peeling paint, doors off the hinges. It's not the Bahamas of your dreams. Yes, there's a pool out back, but you wouldn't want to swim in it. This is the last place you'd expect to find the man we're looking for. But all the leads point right here.

Okay, you don't know anything about him. Okay, thank you very much. Have a great day.

I've never seen him, actually.

Is that right?

Yeah. I don't know him.

We're trying to find him. I'll show you the picture we have.

I haven't seen him.

The car that was identified back in 2015 as being driven by Victor is sitting right here in the parking lot. It's in pretty bad shape.

Have you seen him by any chance? You don't never see him.

But you hear him.

Oh, really?

You.

Hear people every night.

You do?

Having parties. They have quite a bit of arguing, too.

There's.

People that are.

I don't know, four or five nights a week, but I've never seen him. I wouldn't recognize if he.

Walked by here. Well, we are.

Thinking we might have found Victor where he lives. There's no doorbell to ring, there's no name on the door, there's no mailbox. This really does seem like somebody who does not want to be found.

Hello? There's something really off here. It doesn't add up because this place, it's a wreck. Victor, he was once seriously, seriously loaded. I'm talking millions and millions of dollars. He had a plan, a cunning plan, a plan to get control of all the oil of an entire country. I promise you, that was a lot of oil. Here's the question, and it's a good one. How does a guy like that end up in a place like this? This is The Pirate of Prague, an Apple original podcast. Produced by Blanchard House. I'mno, no, Sarah.

Chapter.

1, The Party. The thing about bad guys is you often can't help but like them in spite of yourself. Let's not mince words here. This is a story about a very bad guy, at least if everything they say about him is true. This is a guy who came from nothing to having the very best of everything. Everything everyone else wants: private jets, yachts, secluded islands, and suitcases bursting with cash, other people's cash. The fellow in question was an oligarch, maybe even the first oligarch. Maybe even the first oligarch, the oligarch who showed all the other oligarchs how to be an oligarch. Only, unlike the rest of them, this guy, you could imagine being friends with him. People liked him. I mean, they really liked him. He was a smoozer, a charmer. And unlike those other oligarchs, this guy is not Russian. He's from the Czech Republic. The tabloids called him the Pirate of Prague.

I was mesmerized. I was wildly attracted to it. I just thought I had never met anyone like him, which most people who've met him would also say.

He goes to me, My name is Victor Cusini. I'm here to buy an island. Like a mad genius, perhaps a bit twisted.

It was one of those experiences you look back on and think, Was I really there? Did I really do that? Did all of this really happen?

This is the story of Victor Kazany.

Hello, Victor? Hello?

That guy knocking on the door? That's Peter Elkind, a journalist and a good friend of mine. Once upon a time, we worked for the same magazine, and I sent you around the globe on this one.

You did. Youdid. I went to NASA and the Bahamas. I got to take a plane ride with Victor at the controls.

That sounds dangerous.

It was interesting, to the least. I spent a lot of time with some of the wealthiest people on the planet. I also got to travel to Azerbaijan of all places.

You love this story, but I got to ask, was it because you got an all expenses paid trip to the Bahamas?

There was that. I didn't exactly spend time on the beach, but yes, I really, really love this story.

Anyway, you wrote it, I edited it, we published it, but the tail hadn't really ended.

Exactly right. It was far from over, and I always wanted to return to it because a lot has.

Happened since. All right, so we are back. So where do we start? Well, how.

About Christmas 1997 in Aspen, Colorado?

Okay, so it's early evening, three days before Christmas. Aspen, Chichie. Really, Chichie. The place you buy a house when you've really made it. Actually, it's the place where you can't buy a house unless you've really made it. Sure, there's skiing, but if you're in this tax bracket, who cares about the skiing? Anyway, it's 1997, Bill Clinton is President, and the Spice Girls are at number one with their hit song Too Much. In this town, everyone has too much. One guy in particular. The snow is falling. The festive lights sparkle. Everyone is off the slopes. It's opre ski time. And there's one party in particular that everyone's talking about. It's happening at one of Aspen's swankiest addresses. This place is posh. It is right up high on top of what the locals call Billionaire's Mountain. And the host? Yep, it's Victor, just 34 years old, and he's got a sensational smile.

Six feet plus.

Red hair, big grim.

And totally charming person.

Very personable, very charming.

He was as charming as almost anybody I've ever met.

Mr. Charming. Sort of like movie star charming.

Okay, all right, I get it.

He's charming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's charming. He's charismatic. But Victor wasn't just a charmer. He was way more than that.

He's brilliant. Victor is brilliant.

That's Kemal Callahan. And she should know... She should know she was once married to the guy.

I said, He's so brilliant. I've never met anyone more brilliant in my life. I remember telling my sister, I've never met anybody so smart, and I find intelligence incredibly attractive. But the very thing that I loved about him, which was his brilliance, was also the thing that was lethal about him.

Yeah, she said, lethal. Victor was the new boy in town. Nobody seemed to know much about him, except that he was some businessman, and he had a lot of cash. There's a rumor that at some Tony Mayfair restaurant in London, that's the most expensive neighborhood, he sent back an $8,000 bottle of French wine. The check that night, $21,000.

If I had said to him, I really feel like some truffles, he probably would have sent the plane to Italy to pick them up. There was this feeling of limitlessness.

That's Catherine Fleck. Aspen's her home, and she got to know our guy pretty well. He made quite the first impression.

Victor came to town in the fall, I believe. The story goes that he arrived with a suitcase full of cash, walked into a real estate office and said, I want to buy a big, beautiful house. What I really want is the house up on top of the mountain.

2137 Red Mountain Road. The Peak House, people called it.

It may have been the largest price paid for a house in Aspen at that time.

Oh, it was. It cost Victor just shy of $20 million, and he paid cash. Victor was Aspen's version of Jay Gatsby, someone few people knew well, but everyone wondered about and gossiped about. And soon he did something else that was quintessential Gatsby. He threw a party. But this wasn't exactly a housewarming. It was much more than that. Much, much more. It seems Victor was up to something. But of course, his guests, they didn't know that. For them, it was just a hot ticket.

Everyone wanted an invitation.

It was a hell of a party.

The Cristal was flowing. The Chateau Petrusse was flowing.

Money was no object, let's put it that way.

One of the best parties I've ever gone to in my life.

Everybody who is anybody was there. The well-healed, the well-connected, the richest of the rich. They all got an invite. And if you didn't get one, well, you were a nobody.

People were actually calling the party planner and saying, I want to be invited to this party.

I got multiple calls at home because people are guests that I might be working on this event.

That's the fella that organized it all. Peter Halburn, party planner, par exelence, the guy who put on the flashiest events for those with the deepest pockets.

People found out that he was giving this massive holiday party. And of course, in Aspen, everybody thinks they should be invited. It doesn't work that way, but they think. They certainly will call whomever they know to see if they can get in that way. All the little ploys were tried.

The guest list started with 100 names, but guess what?

It kept getting added to. We were hearing rumors that the count was up to 450 and then the count was up to 500, at which point we tried to have a conversation with Victor that we can't really handle any more people. He said, Oh, you could make it work, and walked away.

The.

Invite said 7:00 PM, and boy, were people eager.

Everybody served arrived at the same time. At one point, there are people standing outside waiting to get in, which, sir, reminded me of a nightclub. A bad nightclub.

It was pandemonium.

Where do you put 500 coats? And where do you put it?

Inside.

At the top of the staircase, stood Victor, greeting each guest one by one. Though he didn't have a clue who half these people were.

I was behind him, and I would whisper into Victor's ear, This is Mr. And Mrs. So-and-so. That was it. I didn't give him any histories on the people or where they came from or anything of that nature because we were trying to get the traffic jam out of the doorway.

A little later on in the grand living room, our host slowly eased his way through the throng. He was pressing the flesh, grabbing hands, slapping backs, flashing that smile.

He was tall. I don't know how tall he is. Six, four, six, three. He's tall. Blond hair, blue eyes, check accent.

It was an intoxicating mix for Victor's former wife, Kemdl.

Victor has a charisma. I don't know what it is. I don't know how he does it. I don't think it's something you can learn how to do. I just know I'm not the only one who was bedazzled.

Bedazzled? Don't you just love that word? Victor wasn't the only draw. There were some big names there that night. Goldie Hawn and Ivana Trump. Was it really five years since her divorce from Donald? But they weren't the guests who really mattered to Victor. They were part of Victor's act to impress the guests who did really matter, the big money types. By all accounts, they were Victor's marks. Like his new neighbor, Rick Berk, hardly a household name, but worth a lot more than most.

Household names.

He's the Berck from Dunian Berck, the luxury handbag maker, and there's a lot of money in handbags. Berk wasn't even going to come to the party, said he didn't have a tucks. But Victor picked up the phone and twisted his arm. So Berk went. And like everyone else, he was blown away. But of course, in time, like plenty of other people there that night, he'd come to wish that he'd stayed home. So Peter, who else was there?

Well, there were a bunch of other big money investors. Crucially, there was this guy, Aaron Fleck.

So tell me about him.

Aaron Fleck is a money manager who handled a few hundred million dollars in assets, and it was mostly for wealthy families. That's not a ton of money as these things go. But the crucial thing about Aaron was that he was really well liked and very well connected. He had impeccable connections on Wall Street.

He's the guy Victor wants as an ally.

Exactly.

He was a great host. Everything about it was top notch.

That's Aaron Fleck, still going strong at 101.

Everything was the finest. Your dures, your caviar. He bought the champagne, the pink stuff, and the petrous. I heard he bought all the petrous around the country.

Peter, what is petrous?

Actually, Joe, it's Chateau Petrus. It's one of the most expensive wines in the world.

Really? The kitchen was buzzing with top chefs hired just for that night.

He said they were the best in the country. He brought them in. Each one had a specialty. That's what he told me.

It was a seven course sit down dinner. The meal alone cost a thousand dollars per head, plus $500 per person for the cocktails, for the champagne, and.

The wine. Chateau Patrusse, baby.

There were two waiters attending each table.

Remind me how many people there were at this party?

Well, we think there were around 500.

So what did the whole thing cost?

It was easily over a million bucks.

So you get it. It was a big party. An expensive party. An extravagant party. The party of a lifetime. But why? You don't spend more than a million bucks on a party just for the hell of it. Victor was up to something. Of course, he was. He was always up to something. And this was something big, something audacious. He'd pulled a trick like this once before, but this was on a whole other level. He was too savvy to talk about it openly, of course, but he could drop the odd hint. Something about a massive deal that was about to go down. The opportunity of a lifetime, and it could be worth billions. But to make billions, you need, well, at least a few million. And whose millions was Victor after? You guessed it. So where was this deal, anyway? It was a long way from Aspen, thousands of miles to the east.

Welcome to the Republic of Azerbaijan. Not exactly the best place on God's Earth to invest. On the checklist of red flags, it's got them all. War torn, check. An economy on its knees. Check. Grinding poverty, check. Autocratic ruler? Yep.. And of course, plenty of bribery and corruption. Full house. So what the heck was Victor doing in a place like this?

Well, squeezed between Iran and Russia, Azerbaijan had one thing, the thing that always trumps everything else. A real game-changer, oil. We'll come back to the oil. Meanwhile, at the peak house, everybody was getting, shall we say, thoroughly lubricated.

We had tables all over the place. I mean, tables everywhere. I mean, close enough that you could actually fall into the reflection pool. I think somebody did.

It.

Was all play. It was all play. Everything was top drawer. So people really were indulging, shall we say? And they were also touring the house. And what.

A house it was. Carved into the side of the Red Mountain. Less a house and more an estate with a heated driveway to melt the snow. The inside was something else too. Seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms. There was a $2 million ivory collection, a 17th century Flemish tapestry, a couch hand-sewn from 33 alligator skins. There was a hot tub, a spa, sauna, a lap pool, a salarium, a 12 vehicle garage with a $250,000 jet black, armor Mercedes parked inside. The place even had its own elevator. No oligarch should ever have to take the stairs, right? A total of 23,000 sqft of primal, Aspen Real Estate. Peter, Victor would later add a few of his own personal touches, right?

Yeah, that's exactly right. Little things. None of which, by the way, he had approval to build. One of them was a cigar room. Victor loved his cigar. He also had his own personal wine cave built with seating for 12.

You go to the wine cave, you sit down and you have a drink?

Or two or three. Then he had a panic room installed in the house.

Did he have anything to panic about?

Well, not just yet. You'll love this detail, Joe. Behind a hidden door, he had a mistress bedroom suite installed.

In the house. A mistress suite? So you've driven up to the peak house and you've had a little sniff around. What was it like?

Yeah. I only managed to stand outside the main gates. We couldn't go in. I peered over and one thing was very clear. It was very grandios. The whole thing was super over the top.

In other words, it's like something Donald Trump would own.

Yeah, you could say that. But even if not your taste, you know that whoever owns it that they're super rich and successful. This was all part of Victor's act to convince these rich people in Aspen, his neighbors that he was the right person to invest with. You could say it was the shadow patrice of homes.

Lunch included bird's nest soup retrieved from a cave in Vietnam and smoked Elk Tenderloin. And then it was time for the main event. The party-goers could hardly believe it. The headline act, a real A-Lister, Natalie Cole.

They brought the lights down, they had the roaring fire, everybody got situated, and she came into the room singing. And people were blown away. It was really amazing because she had polished off most of the bottle of Grondolini before she even performed.

The food, the wine, the house, and now this being serenated by Natalie Cole, by the fireplace three days before Christmas. And was that the ghost of her father, Nat King Cole, flickering above the flames? Or was that just the chateauof a truths taking effect? What a show. But remember, this spectacle, this piece of theater, it was all part of the lure, an elaborate seduction. And it was slowly working its magic. And still, Victor had only just hinted about his deal, his grand plan with the promise of almost unimaginable returns, the returns you can only make with that stuff that has a magic all its own. Peter, I never thought of Azerbaijan as having a lot of oil. But then again, I never really thought about Azerbaijan at all.

Understandable, but Joe, Azerbaijan really has a lot of oil. It was actually the site of the world's first oil well. And back in the early 1900s, it was the Saudi Arabia of its day. At one point, it produced half of the world's oil. Azerbajan.

Azerbaijan. It was the first time many of them had even heard of the place. But that didn't matter. By this stage of the evening, they didn't care. Victor's hints just sounded so exotic, so enticing, so intoxicating. Victor had his guests right where he wanted them. They were sold, but not because of the plan. They barely knew what the plan was. It was because of Victor. It was the early hours. Party planner, Peter Halburn was helping the stragglers out the door.

I think we got the last person out at 3:00 in the morning.

High-rolling investor Aaron Fleck had a terrific night.

I never stayed out that late before or after. It was very late.

They'd remember this party for a long, long time. Victor made sure of that. Like little kids, they each left clutching a party bag and some party bag. Inside a gift, a very expensive gift from Asbury and Garard, the Ritzy London jewelers.

That's right. I got gold cufflinks, and I think he gave my wife a diamond.

The party was over. The groundwork had been laid. It was time to get down to business.

He said, You can invest and you're going to make a lot of money. Those are his exact words.

What exactly was this deal of Victor's?

Well, it was all about Azerbaijan's crown jewel, Socar.

Socar?

It was a state-owned oil company, and Victor said it was being privatized and it was up for grabs.

They were offering Victor a piece of it?

Not just a piece of it, Joe. According to Victor, he could get his hands on the whole thing.

Okay, that sounds completely crazy.

Well, the whole story is crazy.

But.

Victor knew exactly how he was going to do this. He had a plan. He'd done something like this once before.

Just to put this in context, how big a deal was this at the time, which is 1997?

It was huge. If you owned Socar, you owned all of Azerbaijan's oil, and that was a lot. It was a really big deal, and Victor was promising, promising that anyone smart enough to get involved would make a fortune.

We talked about the potential of many billions of dollars, more than a hundred times your investments.

A hundred times your investment? I mean, even Warren Buffett wouldn't expect that return. Anyway, word about the deal spread fast. Was it risky? Of course it was. But it was too attractive, too enticing to resist. Even for these investors, the smartest of the smart, Victor had cast his spell. The house, the party, and yes, the Chateau Patrusse. It had all worked like a charm. His neighbors had been desperate to get into the party. Now, many were desperate to join Victor's big scheme. He'd even have to fend some of them off. They barely knew the guy, but they were about to part with millions and millions of their hard-earned dollars.

You see what he does. You see that he engages in something, but it's actually not for the other people, it's for him. It's the win for him. The shrapnel doesn't matter.

And Victor's former wife, Kemda, she was one of the casualties.

I understand how people are swayed by his charisma and his ability to charm people. That brought a lot of big people down.

Pretty soon, word of Victor's deal started to spread far beyond Aspen, and it seemed like everyone wanted in. A Wall Street billionaire, one of the world's biggest corporations, a former senior member of the US Senate. All of them bedazzled.

I treated him like he was part of my family, like he was a son. Do I hate him? I know who he is, that's all.

Victor's illusion appeared so complete, so believable, so utterly perfect that these people were about to ignore everything they've ever learned about investing and make, quite possibly, the worst decision of their lives because they were about to go into business with the pirate of Prague. Financini, Galeos. Milliona. Cash. Out. You've been listening to The Pirate of Prague, an Apple original podcast, produced by Blanchard House and hosted by me, Joe Nocira.

The.

Producer is Ben Cryton. The Associate Producer is Peter Elkind. The writers are Lawrence Grisele, Ben Cryton, and me, Joe Nosira. Music is by Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis Nankmanell, and Toby Matamon. Sound design and engineering by Valkin Kizeltug. Our managing producer is Amika Shortino-Nolen. The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pai. The executive producer and head of content at Blanchard House is Lawrence Grusel. I'm.