Who Is Robert Maxwell? Narrated by Margaret Cho — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00- [Interviewer] You understand
2. 0:01that you're a very controversial man in this country.
3. 0:04- I'm delighted.
4. 0:05- [Margaret] That's Robert Maxwell.
5. 0:06The media mogul grew up in a shack and died on a yacht.
6. 0:10In between, he was a well-connected opportunist
7. 0:12with Jekyll and Hyde personalities.
8. 0:15His ruthlessness
9. 0:16deeply affected his daughter, Ghislaine Maxwell,
10. 0:18the British socialite accused of trafficking minors
11. 0:21for a convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
12. 0:24I'm Margaret Cho,
13. 0:25and this is the strange case of Robert Maxwell.
14. 0:28(dramatic music)
15. 0:35Robert Maxwell was born Jan Ludvik Hoch
16. 0:37on June 10, 1923,
17. 0:39in a remote salt mining village in Czechoslovakia.
18. 0:43The region, part of the modern day Ukraine,
19. 0:45shifted four times between World War I and World War II,
20. 0:48before eventually collapsing into the Soviet Union.
21. 0:52Growing up, times were tough.
22. 0:54- We lived in one room with seven children,
23. 0:58hungry most of the time.
24. 1:00- [Margaret] The New York Post reported that Maxwell said,
25. 1:02"I was never young.
26. 1:04"I never had that privilege."
27. 1:06Political turmoil shaped Maxwell's childhood.
28. 1:08His family was Jewish, and he was coming of age
29. 1:11right as Adolf Hitler rose to power.
30. 1:13At 11, he was sent to study rabbinical literature.
31. 1:17But a few years later, the Nazis invaded,
32. 1:19so Robert decided to leave the yeshiva.
33. 1:22Before catching the train home,
34. 1:23he cut off his payot, his long side locks,
35. 1:26to hide his Jewish identity.
36. 1:28At 16, he enlisted in the Hungarian resistance as a spy,
37. 1:33but was quickly arrested at the border.
38. 1:35He spent four months shackled in a windowless room
39. 1:39before the authorities ordered a show trial
40. 1:41for his execution.
41. 1:43But Maxwell, always in survival mode,
42. 1:45managed to escape on his way to court.
43. 1:48As soon as he was out,
44. 1:49he immediately wanted back into the action.
45. 1:51He joined the French Foreign Legion
46. 1:54and was shipped to Liverpool.
47. 1:56There, he taught himself English
48. 1:58and changed his name to Ivan to sound more British.
49. 2:01- I enjoyed the war.
50. 2:03- [Margaret] His name changed again
51. 2:05before he finally became Ian Robert Maxwell.
52. 2:08By then, he was a second lieutenant
53. 2:10in the Queen's Royal Regiment
54. 2:12and wanted to sound more distinguished, Scottish,
55. 2:15and, well, less Jewish.
56. 2:17During the war, Maxwell became fluent in multiple languages
57. 2:21and was often assigned to go undercover,
58. 2:23but he didn't mind the danger.
59. 2:25In fact, he had a reputation for acting pretty brazen
60. 2:28and putting his life on the line for his soldiers,
61. 2:31even if that meant going against orders.
62. 2:33Near the end of his life, he was investigated
63. 2:36for having possibly killed an unarmed German civilian
64. 2:39during the war.
65. 2:40Maxwell even admitted the crime in a letter to his wife,
66. 2:43but the case was closed because investigators
67. 2:46were unable to find a witness.
68. 2:48When the war ended, Maxwell was awarded the Military Cross.
69. 2:52That same year, he learned that his parents
70. 2:54and four of his siblings had been killed at Auschwitz.
71. 2:57But he didn't get much time to grieve.
72. 2:59Immediately, he left for Paris and wed Betty Maynard,
73. 3:02a friendly French Protestant woman he met two months earlier
74. 3:05at a service men's club.
75. 3:07Four days after the wedding and already back in the service,
76. 3:11he sent Betty a very romantic letter
77. 3:14with his six rules for the perfect partnership.
78. 3:17One, don't nag.
79. 3:19Two, don't criticize unduly.
80. 3:22Three, give honest appreciation.
81. 3:25Four, pay little attentions.
82. 3:28Five, be courteous.
83. 3:29Six, have the utmost confidence
84. 3:32in yourself and your partner.
85. 3:35When his military service ended,
86. 3:36he took over a subsidiary
87. 3:38of a medical and legal textbook company
88. 3:41and renamed it Pergamon.
89. 3:43At the same time, he was also importing and exporting goods
90. 3:46under the name Anglo-Continental Exchange Limited
91. 3:50with a business partner named Kurt Wallersteiner.
92. 3:54For this, the FBI suspected the two had become Soviet spies.
93. 3:58A British intelligence file also described Robert
94. 4:01as a thoroughly bad character,
95. 4:03and almost certainly financed by Russia.
96. 4:06But they were never able to prove it.
97. 4:08KGB or not, Robert's first big business scandal
98. 4:11was on the horizon.
99. 4:13In 1951, he acquired the publishing warehouse
100. 4:16Simpkin Marshall with a loan from Wallersteiner.
101. 4:19But when Wallersteiner inquired
102. 4:20about the company's finances,
103. 4:22he discovered that it was deeply in debt.
104. 4:24Apparently Maxwell had been taking Simpkin's money
105. 4:27and investing it in other ventures.
106. 4:29By 1955, Robert had run the 175-year-old company
107. 4:35into the ground.
108. 4:37In 1957, Wallersteiner was indicted in the United States
109. 4:41for violating the Trading with the Enemy Act.
110. 4:43No more importing and exporting with the Soviet block.
111. 4:47For Maxwell, things were relatively quiet
112. 4:49on the business front for the next few years.
113. 4:51The family had become quite wealthy
114. 4:53and lived in a 53-room mansion in Oxford.
115. 4:56In 1961, they had their ninth and final child,
116. 5:00a daughter named Ghislaine.
117. 5:02There was no question
118. 5:03that Ghislaine was daddy's little girl.
119. 5:05Maxwell kept a picture of her on his desk.
120. 5:07And for a long time, it was the only photo in his office.
121. 5:10He even named his beloved yacht after her.
122. 5:13But for the most part, Maxwell's affection
123. 5:15was characteristically hard to come by.
124. 5:17He was a strict disciplinarian,
125. 5:19and Betty recalled how he would shout
126. 5:22and threaten and rant at the children
127. 5:24until they were reduced to a pulp.
128. 5:26In that giant house, the kids lived under a microscope.
129. 5:30Maxwell would do things like assign them specialized topics
130. 5:33to discuss at meal times,
131. 5:35and then evaluate their performance.
132. 5:38Ghislaine's brother Ian said,
133. 5:39"I always felt like I was courting his approval.
134. 5:41"You could never small talk with the old man.
135. 5:44"Either something was of consequence, or it wasn't."
136. 5:47For as cruel as he could be,
137. 5:48Maxwell could also be very charismatic.
138. 5:51In the early 1960s, he became a politician
139. 5:54and ran on the Labor Party ticket.
140. 5:56According to his friend Dick Davy, Maxwell said,
141. 5:59"Well of course I'm conservative.
142. 6:01"But I'm not a member of the establishment.
143. 6:03"So I've got to become Labor."
144. 6:05Maxwell became a member of Parliament in 1964.
145. 6:08When he was up for re-election,
146. 6:10he called himself the Man Who Gets Things Done
147. 6:13and won by an even wider margin.
148. 6:15But that reputation didn't last long.
149. 6:18He started recommending questionable austerity measures,
150. 6:22like taking the free milks out of school lunches.
151. 6:24And an investigation by the Sunday Times
152. 6:27revealed he'd been using some creative accounting.
153. 6:30Maxwell threatened to sue the Times.
154. 6:32But later, his demeanor changed entirely,
155. 6:35and he even congratulated Harold Evans, the paper's editor,
156. 6:38on his thorough research.
157. 6:40Evans said the businessman seemed to have two modes.
158. 6:43Either he would thump the table and bellow at you,
159. 6:46or he would turn seductive and pretend to be your friend.
160. 6:49You never knew which Maxwell you were going to get.
161. 6:52That was Maxwell's M-O.
162. 6:54In her memoir, Betty described Maxwell
163. 6:56as having Jekyll and Hyde personalities
164. 6:58and said he often reserved his worst self
165. 7:00for his innermost circles.
166. 7:02No one was spared, not even his favorite.
167. 7:05One time, when Ghislaine said she wanted
168. 7:07to meet a businessman named Donald Trump,
169. 7:09Maxwell asked her, "Have you got your head in your bum?
170. 7:12"Why the **** would Donald Trump want to waste his time
171. 7:15"seeing you with your crappy gifts
172. 7:17"when he has a multi-million-dollar business to run?"
173. 7:20In 1969, Maxwell suffered two big blows to his reputation.
174. 7:25He lost a bid for the tabloid newspaper News of the World,
175. 7:29which was later scooped up
176. 7:30by Australian businessman Rupert Murdoch.
177. 7:33Maxwell had burned Murdoch
178. 7:35on a business deal some years earlier,
179. 7:37and the two men were bitter rivals.
180. 7:40- [Interviewer] How do you feel about the prospect
181. 7:41of losing yet another newspaper to Mr. Murdoch?
182. 7:44- Well it's not my newspaper that I was losing.
183. 7:47I just happened to be the person who took the lead
184. 7:50in negotiating for the Sun to become a paper
185. 7:53that would give the Labor Party
186. 7:55and the Labor movement support.
187. 7:57- [Margaret] Meanwhile, the Sunday Times
188. 7:59had caught wind of trouble at Pergamon.
189. 8:01Rumors were swirling that Maxwell
190. 8:02was creating an illusion of profitability
191. 8:05by using other subsidiaries
192. 8:07to buy expensive encyclopedia sets.
193. 8:10Fun.
194. 8:11Maxwell denied the rumors, but became paranoid
195. 8:14about whether Murdoch had planted the article.
196. 8:16In 1970, following this series of public humiliations,
197. 8:20Maxwell lost his seat in Parliament.
198. 8:23In 1980, Maxwell began to salvage his business reputation
199. 8:26by saving Europe's largest printing company from bankruptcy.
200. 8:29But he still wanted a paper.
201. 8:31At the time,
202. 8:32Murdoch owned the right-leaning tabloid The Sun,
203. 8:34so Maxwell set his sights on The Sun's rival,
204. 8:37the left-leaning Daily Mirror.
205. 8:39When he acquired the Mirror in 1984,
206. 8:41Maxwell brought his creative accounting practices with him.
207. 8:45He used the company's four pension funds
208. 8:47as his personal piggy banks,
209. 8:49borrowing millions of pounds to cover shortfalls.
210. 8:51He repaid the loans, but he knew it was risky.
211. 8:54In 1988, he combined the pensions into a single fund
212. 8:58to be managed by a Lichtenstein-based foundation,
213. 9:01his very own Maxwell Charitable Trust.
214. 9:04Maxwell was borrowing hundreds of millions
215. 9:06to keep his printing press empire,
216. 9:08Maxwell Communication Corporation, afloat
217. 9:10so graphics like these could stay in tact.
218. 9:22And banks kept giving him loans
219. 9:23because he backed them with the money in Lichtenstein.
220. 9:26The same year Maxwell acquired the Mirror,
221. 9:28he accompanied fellow British business tycoon Gerald Ronson
222. 9:32to a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister.
223. 9:34For decades, Maxwell had kept his Jewish roots private.
224. 9:37But Ronson convinced him to admit his ancestry.
225. 9:40Midway through their meeting,
226. 9:41Maxwell announced he wanted
227. 9:42to invest a quarter of a billion dollars in Israel
228. 9:45and agreed to share security intel with the Mossad.
229. 9:49Maxwell kept his word.
230. 9:50Two years later, an Israeli nuclear technician
231. 9:53named Mordechai Vanunu went to London
232. 9:55hoping to blow the whistle
233. 9:56on a dangerous nuclear arms program.
234. 9:58He was prepared to sell the evidence to the Sunday Times.
235. 10:01But Maxwell persuaded him to sell the story
236. 10:04to the Mirror instead.
237. 10:05Maxwell sent the pictures to the Israeli embassy in London,
238. 10:08supposedly to confirm the truth of the story.
239. 10:12But Maxwell never paid Vanunu
240. 10:14and never ran the story either.
241. 10:16Later, Vanunu was drugged and kidnapped back to Israel,
242. 10:19where he was imprisoned on crimes against the state.
243. 10:22Some years later, at Maxwell's funeral,
244. 10:25Israeli President Shimon Peres
245. 10:27personally praised Maxwell's services to Israel.
246. 10:31In addition to his creative accounting,
247. 10:32Maxwell employed some creative management practices
248. 10:36at the Mirror.
249. 10:36Almost immediately, he forced the unions
250. 10:39to accept mass layoffs
251. 10:40and threatened to shut the paper down
252. 10:42if they didn't agree to his terms.
253. 10:44Needing to be in control at all times,
254. 10:46he even wired tapped the office phones.
255. 10:49- American business,
256. 10:52ethics do not exist.
257. 10:55And business apparently,
258. 10:57you've got to assume right from the beginning
259. 11:01that you're dealing with people
260. 11:03who have got the morals of barnyard roosters.
261. 11:07- [Margaret] Maxwell was losing control.
262. 11:08That year, he divorced Betty
263. 11:10on the grounds she was raving mad.
264. 11:12And a financial paper revealed
265. 11:13that Maxwell Communication Corporation
266. 11:15was operating at significant losses.
267. 11:18Maxwell attempted to refute this,
268. 11:20but the writing was on the wall.
269. 11:22He was forced to repay his debts
270. 11:23by liquidating a bunch of assets,
271. 11:25including his 51% stake in MTV Europe,
272. 11:29a pretty desperate move in 1990.
273. 11:33His finances got so unmanageable
274. 11:35that, in 1991, he sold his crown jewel, Pergamon.
275. 11:39By this point, Maxwell had sold 96 million pounds
276. 11:43of the Mirror's pension assets.
277. 11:45The paper's finance director noticed some discrepancies
278. 11:48and launched an internal investigation.
279. 11:50It turned out Maxwell owed over a billion pounds
280. 11:54to several banking institutions,
281. 11:56including Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs.
282. 11:58Eventually, the Swiss bank called in the fraud squad.
283. 12:01On November 1, 1991,
284. 12:03Maxwell boarded his yacht the Lady Ghislaine
285. 12:06for a last-minute trip to Madeira and the Canary Islands.
286. 12:09The crew said he was in unusually good spirits
287. 12:12and didn't do any work, which was unlike him.
288. 12:15He also boarded alone, no butler, no personal assistant,
289. 12:19and brought almost no luggage with him.
290. 12:21Then, on the morning of November 5th,
291. 12:23his crew noticed him missing.
292. 12:25A few days later, his body was recovered
293. 12:28from the Atlantic Ocean.
294. 12:29- I also want to take this opportunity
295. 12:33to thank all the many hundreds of people
296. 12:40who have sent messages of support
297. 12:44to us at this very, very sad time.
298. 12:49- [Margaret] What happened to Robert Maxwell
299. 12:50is still a mystery.
300. 12:52Some have speculated that he may have taken his own life
301. 12:54or even been killed.
302. 12:55But many think his death was probably just an accident.
303. 12:59Although Ghislaine was his favorite,
304. 13:00Kevin became his primary inheritor
305. 13:02because Robert did not believe that these things
306. 13:05should go to women.
307. 13:06Kevin and Ian were unable
308. 13:08to salvage their father's companies
309. 13:09and went through the largest bankruptcy in British history.
310. 13:13In 1996, the sons faced fraud trials,
311. 13:15but were both acquitted.
312. 13:17Defrauded out of 446 million pounds,
313. 13:20pensioners at the Mirror and other Maxwell companies
314. 13:22were eventually bailed out by public funds,
315. 13:25though they only ever received about half
316. 13:27of what they were entitled to.
317. 13:29And somehow, the Lady Ghislaine
318. 13:31is now owned by Rupert Murdoch's ex-wife, Anna.
319. 13:36In the end, Robert's antiquated views on inheritance
320. 13:39protected Ghislaine from taking on any legal responsibility.
321. 13:42But she didn't need to inherit her father's crimes.
322. 13:45She was already well on her way
323. 13:47to creating an infamous legacy of her own.
324. 13:50For more on Ghislaine Maxwell,
325. 13:52be sure to check out the brand new docu-series
326. 13:54"Chasing Ghislaine", now on Discovery+.
327. 13:59(dramatic music)