Mr Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), paid a working visit to Monaco on Wednesday, February 15. He was accompanied by Mr Ralf Gruenert, UNHCR Representative in Monaco and France.
Mr Grandi was received in audience by HSH Prince Albert in the presence of Mrs Anne-Marie Boisbouvier, Counselor to the Prince’s Cabinet and HE Mrs Carole Lanteri, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Monaco to the United Nations Office in Geneva.
A working lunch was also organised by the Minister of State, as well as a meeting with Mr Gilles Tonelli, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.
The Principality has been cooperating with the Office of UNHCR since 1956 and has always affirmed its solidarity with people fleeing war or persecution. In a particularly difficult international context, with displacements unprecedented since the Second World War, these meetings provided an opportunity to discuss the urgency of the migrant crisis, particularly in the Mediterranean, but also to reiterate the long-standing support from the Principality to UNHCR.
The procedures set up by the government for the reception of refugees from the Middle East was also at the centre of discussions: the Principality intends to assume its share of responsibility on a global scale.
At the end of the day, in order to illustrate Monaco’s commitment to the New York Declaration on Refugees and Migrants, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2016, the Government of Monaco signed two partnership agreements with UNHCR for a total contribution of €670,000 over three years for projects in favour of refugees in Morocco and Tunisia. In 2016, the Principality was the fifth largest donor country to UNHCR per capita.
This was the first official visit of UNHCR in the Principality.
The 1st International Motor Show of Monaco (SIAM) opens Thursday, February 16, with three venues to choose from.
Starting at 10 am, HSH Prince Albert will open the show, which lasts until Sunday, February 19, on the Quai Albert 1er, the Place du Casino and the Place du Palais. The show is dedicated to innovation, prestige and ecology, the organisers say.
The Monegasque manufacturer Monte Carlo Automobile will present the Tecno MonteCarlo, an exceptional car in a world premiere. The Tecno Montecarlo W12 is capable of reaching 300 kph. Tesla S and X, Porsche 919 Hybrid, Mercedes Electric, and the latest Renault concept car, the Trezor, will also be in the line-up.
On the sidelines of the exhibition of eco-friendly cars, the Grimaldi Forum will host a forum on the theme “Ecological Automobile and Innovation”, organised in partnership with the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, on Friday, February 17, from 9 am to 6 pm.
Entrance to the International Motor Show of Monaco is €15. Access is free for children under-10.
Dan-Bunkering (Monaco) SAM has announced the hirings of Pascal Bellet and Dimitris Ardamis as Bunker Traders.
Mr Bellet was born and educated in Monaco and graduated from the International University of Monaco in 2010. He then began his career in the shipping and yachting industry.
Originally from Greece, Mr Ardamis holds a BSc in Maritime Business and Logistics from the University of Plymouth, and gained broad experience within the shipping industry during his studies and after graduating.
“Adding two new nationalities to the office is expected to strengthen the already existing international team even further,” said Dan-Bunkering.
Dan-Bunkering supplies bunker fuels, lubricants and related products and services for vessels worldwide.
“Between 82.5 and 83 million foreign tourists visited France in 2016,” Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on February 10. This is down from the record of 85 million recorded in 2015, but France remains the world’s top tourist destination.
Speaking in Biarritz, he added that 2016 was an exceptional year, due to terror attacks, bad weather, and strikes. France attracts more international tourists than either the US or Spain, other top destinations.
Japanese tourists are returning in large numbers following a sharp decline after the attack in Nice in July that took the lives of 86 people. Airline bookings from Japan to Paris are up 60 percent this quarter from the third quarter of 2016.
However, the country must do more to remain attractive, the minister affirmed. Beyond emergency measures, such as better video surveillance to improve security, there is a need to improve the welcome offered to visitors, he said. The final number of tourists who visited France in 2016 will be unveiled in March.
Magali de la Cruz Rio, Operational Manager of Sautter Cigars with Darlo and Anita Di Sotto of the non-profit Monte-Carlo Whisky Society
Last week, the Monte Carlo Whisky Society held a Master Class on the terrace of Restaurant Oliban at Place d’Armes.
The theme of the members-only tasting event was cigars, an education led by Cuban-born Magali de la Cruz Rio, Operational Manager of Sautter Cigars of Mayfair. Ms de la Cruz Rio had arranged with her family in Cuba, who own a tobacco farm, to hand roll a special vitola for the Monte Carlo Whisky Society, aptly named “La Flor de Monaco”.
“We have not put a label on the cigar yet,” Ms de la Cruz Rio told Monaco Life, “as I am waiting to get feedback from the Society as to whether I should refine the flavour. Once we have the definite blend, then each hand-rolled cigar will have La Flor de Monaco label.”
Ms de la Cruz Rio was born into a tobacco farming family in Cuba. “Cigars are my identity. To see my father alive, my mother, who’s 81 and still rolling cigars, and smoking a cigar with my grandfather when I was eight.”
Eight? “My father caught me and had my mother roll two tiny cigars, one for me and one for my ten-year-old sister. We had to smoke them. We were green, dizzy, sick to our stomachs. My sister never smoked again. I can’t say the same!”
At the age of 14, Ms de la Cruz Rio attended drama school in Havana, and through the works she was studying, developed an inquisitive attitude towards Castro’s Cuba. She wrote “Requiem to the Dictator” and it wasn’t long before there was a knock on her door in the middle of the night.
“I thought the police were taking me in for routine questioning.” She disappeared for a week in 1994.
“I remember the cold and darkness,” she described as she showed scars after an incident produced by broken glass.
Though a contact with the cultural attaché at the British Embassy in Havana, Ms de la Cruz Rio was released and slept a few nights at the Embassy before being put on a plane, with only a few personal items, to London with the attaché. Although she believed the ordeal was behind her, an army General boarded the plane to try and force her off. Luckily she had diplomatic immunity. “I was not allowed to return to Cuba for eleven years.”
Ms de la Cruz Rio spoke little English but was determined to make her life in London, where her sister lived. She worked as a drama teacher at a children’s school before returning to what she knew best. She became a tobacco buyer in 1996 for the UK DutyFree and then, under the guidance of her brother-in-law who had worked for the Cuban government Tobacco Department in the UK, started to learn as much as she could about the commercial side of the industry. This included travels to whisky distilleries in Scotland, and visits to Spain, France and Italy.
Far from the days of a window dresser in Harrods – “I didn’t know the names of the different materials in English, so that didn’t work out” – Ms de la Cruz Rio’s career has included working at Alfred Dunhill’s St James’ shop and La Casa Del Habano London when, in 2009, Ajat Patel invited her to work there.
From 1900 to 1905, after his first trip to Cuba, Winston Churchill lived above Sautter’s Mount Street store and his first order of Cuban cigars was delivered here. His preferred brand was Romeo y Julieta.
“La Flor de Monaco”, a hand rolled special vitola for the Monte Carlo Whisky Society
She has sold cigars to Harrison Ford, Andy Garcia and Bill Clinton, who in 2001 appeared at Heathrow Duty Free wearing a linen suit and Panama hat, en route to South Africa. “What can be better than meeting Nelson Mandela than smoking a Bolivar cigar?” the former American President expressed to Ms de la Cruz Rio at the time. What indeed.
Since her exile from her home country, Ms de la Cruz Rio has developed a passion for photography and is working on a book about the history of women and cigars.
Her visits to her homeland are few and far between. The first time back, she was refused entry and sent back to London. On another visit her computer, which contained only photos, was hacked. When her mother came to London to visit, the family farm was confiscated. It would be 18 months later and a large sum of money paid to the government before they could reclaim their land. She considers herself Cuban but London (where she learned that Stalin did not win the Second World War) – is her home.
Commenting on Fidel Castro’s death November 25, 2016, Ms de la Cruz Rio said, “I would never celebrate the death of anyone. I owe him my education, and what he did for women in our country.”
Sautter Cigars is a partner of the Monte Carlo Whisky Society, who will soon have available for purchase Monaco’s only hand-rolled specially blended cigar bearing its name, La Flor de Monaco.
Dan-Bunkering (Monaco) SAM has announced the hirings of Pascal Bellet and Dimitris Ardamis as Bunker Traders.
