Robert Vesco

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Robert L. Vesco (1935–2007) was an American financier who became one of the most infamous financial fugitives. Born in Detroit to a factory worker, he left school and built his wealth through aggressive investing and debt-financed takeovers, eventually buying International Controls Corporation (ICC).

By the late 1960s Vesco expanded ICC into airlines and plants, amassing a large personal fortune. In 1970 he began a takeover of Investors Overseas Service (IOS), a troubled mutual fund company, and was accused of serious securities fraud. As U.S. authorities closed in, Vesco fled the country.

In February 1973, with about $200 million of IOS money, Vesco escaped to Costa Rica by corporate jet. He spent years moving between countries that did not extradite him to the United States, including the Bahamas, Antigua, and Nicaragua, trying to maintain control of his ICC stake. Costa Rica passed a law protecting him from extradition, but it was repealed in 1974, ending that protection.

Vesco settled in Cuba in 1982. He married Lidia Alfonso Llauger. In Cuba he faced new charges, including drug smuggling in 1989 and later fraud and illicit economic activity in the 1990s. The Cuban government sentenced him to 13 years in prison in 1996, with release expected around 2009.

Vesco was known for audacious ideas, such as trying to buy Barbuda to make it an independent country. He disappeared from the U.S. spotlight for years while living abroad, and his death in Havana in 2007 was reported by The New York Times as due to lung cancer, though there were rumors that he faked his death.

Vesco’s life has inspired fiction, including appearances in The Blacklist and The Return of Frank Cannon.