Maurice Tempelsman, a renowned diamond merchant and long-time companion of former US first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, died in New York, his family said. He was 95.

His death at a Manhattan hospital on Saturday was caused by complications from a fall, his son Leon told US media.

Tempelsman was as well known for his late-in-life friendship with Jackie O, as tabloids called her, as he was for his entanglements with authoritarian African leaders over the diamond trade.

Tempelsman handled Onassis's finances after the death of her second husband, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, from whom she inherited $26 million. The two were often seen together in New York's Central Park.

Tempelsman, who was with Jackie Onassis from the early 1980s until she died in 1994, and lawyer Alexand

See Full Page