Overview

• He died in Manhattan on Aug. 23 from complications of a fall, according to his son, Leon, who spoke to The New York Times.
• Born in Antwerp in 1929 and later a refugee in New York, he rose in the family firm and in 1984 acquired Lazare Kaplan, cementing his status as a leading figure in the diamond industry.
• He was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s longtime companion and financial adviser, served as co-executor of her will, and cared for her during her 1993 cancer treatment.
• He cultivated extensive operations and relationships in Africa, including a Kinshasa office dating to 1960 and ties to Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko that reporting described as a back-channel to Washington.
• He pressed the U.S. in the 1950s to stockpile industrial diamonds and became a major Democratic donor; survivors include three children, six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.