Overview

• His family said he died Saturday in a Manhattan hospital, confirming the 95-year-old’s death in New York.
• He was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s longtime companion, served as her financial adviser after Aristotle Onassis’s death, and was a co-executor of her will.
• He cemented his standing in the trade by acquiring New York jeweler Lazare Kaplan in 1984, becoming one of the world’s leading diamond merchants.
• He built early operations in Kinshasa and fostered ties with leaders including Mobutu Sese Seko, and was described as a back-channel figure between U.S. officials and African producers.
• Born in Antwerp in 1929 to an Orthodox Jewish family that fled Nazi-occupied Belgium, he later settled in New York and is survived by three children, six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.