Lars Windhorst and Bruno Crastes: inside the most mysterious and destructive friendship in high finance

In October 2019, hundreds of wedding guests flew in from around the world to the grandest resort on the French riviera, the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. But this was to be no ordinary stay at the pleasure palace immortalised in F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel Tender is the Night. The groom had rented out the entire resort, paying exorbitantly for the five-star hotel to reopen after its summer season officially ended. The privacy of his guests was more than assured. As the gathered stepped out on to the terrace with their drinks, they saw not only the vast azure plain of the Mediterranean, but also the groom’s 240ft-long superyacht on the horizon. By the end of the night, Lionel Richie, Craig David and Lenny Kravitz had all serenaded the newly-weds. The wedding’s unstated theme was excess, but the groom was not worth billions. He owed billions. Lars Windhorst, then just shy of 43, had spent three decades in the public eye. As a teenager in the 1990s, he was hailed as a wunderkind of German busines

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• Philipp Reutter