He always seemed an improbable companion for a woman who epitomized style and grace. Just what did she see in this portly, balding diamond merchant who shared her Fifth Avenue apartment, yet remained married to a wife of more than 40 years? He had none of Jack Kennedy’s rakish charm, and his wealth, while substantial, did not approach Aristotle Onassis’s fortune. Yet those who knew Mrs. Onassis came to understand that in Tempelsman – ““M.T.,’’ as her family affectionately called him – she had found perhaps her first true soul mate. He shared her love of the arts and antiques, and her fluency in French. His shrewd financial advice reportedly helped her quadruple her $26 million inheritance from Onassis. And he took it as his mission to ensure that nothing punctured the cocoon of personal privacy she so cherished. As a major player in the highly secretive diamond trade, he knew the meaning of discretion. In the endless stream of paparazzi photos, he was the vigilant and steadfast protector, warding off the world for a frail woman often hidden behind dark glasses and a baggy overcoat.
Most important, friends say, Tempelsman made her feel as if no one else mattered. ““Jack was a politician and he was busy. Need I say more?’’ said Paris attorney Samuel Pisar, a family friend. ““With Onassis, she was a trophy. Tempelsman didn’t look on her as a trophy.''
Their 15-year romance made them perpetual grist for the tabloids – ““the river of sludge,’’ as Mrs. Onassis called the unwanted publicity. But friends say that in private there was nothing particularly glitzy about their life together, which began in the late 1970s. They mounted the occasional high-profile event, like hosting the Clintons last summer on the Relemar, Tempelsman’s 37-foot yacht. And there were still small dinner parties at the Fifth Avenue apartment friends say they’d shared since 1985, and summers at her oceanfront estate on Martha’s Vineyard. Mostly, though, they seemed to hold the world increasingly at bay. ““They were really like an elderly couple. They took quiet pleasures in each other,’’ said one intimate. In her final days he tended to her virtually around the clock, running his business from the apartment so he could be close by, taking her for what would be a last stroll in Central Park. ““Maurice was very much a part of the family,’’ says one Tempelsman associate. Just look, he said, at the order of arrival at the funeral. ““The people who got out of the car together were John, Caroline and Maurice.''
But largely lost in the shadow cast by Mrs. Onassis is a life with its own share of intrigue and enigma. Tempelsman, 64, is a man with a knack for making friends wherever he might need them. Over the last 40 years he has cultivated an intricate network of alliances straddling the worlds of politics, diplomacy and commerce. He built an African diamond and mineral fortune by forging close ties with the secretive De Beers cartel and some of the continent’s most notorious dictators. He lobbied hard in Washington to weaken legislation banning U.S. imports of South African diamonds. Yet during the bleakest days of apartheid, African National Congress president Oliver Tambo counted him as a trusted friend and adviser. As former chairman of the African-American Institute, a nonprofit group that fosters international cooperation, Tempelsman was a must-see for visiting African leaders. His contacts continue to make him an important source of strategic information on a turbulent region. ““He’s the kind of guy who, when you’re trying to figure out what the hell is going on in a country, you can call on the phone and he invariably has something interesting to say,’’ says Chester Crocker, former assistant secretary of state for African affairs.
Born in Belgium, Tempelsman fled the Nazis with his family in 1940 and came to New York, where his father was a successful diamond broker. By his early 20s he was on his way to a fortune as a middleman in barter deals between the United States and Africa, delivering industrial diamonds to the Pentagon’s strategic stockpile in exchange for surplus grain and other agricultural commodities. He also became a major contributor to the Democratic Party. It was through his political connections that he first met young Jacqueline Kennedy in the late 1950s. After the 1960 election Tempelsman set up a meeting for her president-elect husband with African mining officials.
As Africa emerged from its colonial period in the early 1960s, Tempelsman saw opportunity. Those who watched remember his ability to maintain cordial relations with an ever-shifting set of leaders. ““He was a charmer,’’ says William Bradford, U.S. charge d’affaires in Sierra Leone in the early 1960s. Through seven regimes that rose and fell in a two-year period, Tempelsman remained open for business, setting up a diamond-cutting factory and gaining a license to purchase a quarter of the country’s gems. ““He knew how to stay close to people without getting too close,’’ Bradford said, ““so that when they fell, he didn’t fall.''
Critics say Tempelsman also enriched himself by befriending some of the continent’s most corrupt and brutal heads of state. He was on the scene offering advice and counsel to Mobutu Sese Seko as the former army officer rose to power in the Belgian Congo – now Zaire – after a 1965 coup backed by the Central Intelligence Agency. A recent BBC documentary charged that Tempelsman worked to forge ties between diamond-rich Zaire and De Beers. Some in Zaire believe that bribes and secret partnerships with Mobutu smoothed Tempelsman’s way to success, a charge his spokespeople deny.
His ties with De Beers remain close. As chairman of Lazare Kaplan International (LKI), a leading importer and cutter of diamonds, Tempelsman is one of the world’s 160 ““sightholders,’’ an elite club of gem traders invited to buy the stones offered by De Beers, which controls nearly 80 percent of the rough, uncut diamond market. Last year he joined with De Beers to operate a formerly state-owned diamond mine in Ghana. He’s also floated a proposal under which the United States would underwrite a $3.3 billion loan to cash-strapped Russia, using its sizable diamond stockpile as collateral. Industry experts say the plan would benefit De Beers by keeping Russian diamonds off the world market.
Tempelsman is long separated from his wife, Lily (who reportedly refused to grant him a divorce for religious reasons), with whom he maintains a cordial relationship. His children – a son, Leon, who oversees the retail side of the family business, and daughters Rena and Marcee – were known to have approved of their father’s high-profile liaison. He was back at work last week after the funeral, quietly tending to his empire and refusing public comment, grieving in the privacy that he and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis once savored together.
