A royal friend of rich and famous, or just a prince among con men?
HE hobnobbed with aristocrats and Vatican cardinals and conferred the title of countess on the former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson, but the Prince of Montenegro and Macedonia was apparently not all that he seemed.
Far from being the descendant of an illustrious royal line from the Balkans, Italian police claim Stephan Cernetic is a con man and a fantasist.
Mr Cernetic is under investigation for alleged fraud by fabricating identity documents, lying to public officials and claiming a false identity.
“We’ve seen some strange things but nothing like this,” said Alessandro Lisi, a senior carabinieri officer. “It is now up to the judicial authorities to decide whether to arrest him.”
Despite the fact that the royal family of Yugoslavia, which incorporated Montenegro until the break-up of the federation, was abolished when Tito’s Communists seized power after the Second World War, Mr Cernetic gave himself the title “His Imperial and Royal Highness, Hereditary Prince of Montenegro and Macedonia, Serbia and Albania”.
The 56-year-old appears to have wormed his way into the confidence of diplomats, celebrities, businessmen and genuine royalty.
He met the former Formula One impresario Flavio Briatore and was photographed beaming next to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state.
He also met Prince Albert of Monaco and Prince Emanuele Filiberto, the grandson of Umberto II, the last king of Italy – as well as the Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic. Two years ago, at a ceremony on the Italian Riviera, Mr Cernetic laid a silver sword on the shoulder of Pamela Anderson, making her a “contessa” in recognition of her animal welfare work. The ac- tress was gushing in her acceptance speech, addressing the “prince” as “Your Highness”.
He built a richly-illustrated website, complete with heraldic music, laying on thick the claims to royal pedigree.
It is replete with photographs of castles in Transylvania, portraits of princes and emperors, and depictions of historic battles against the Turks.
Claiming to divide his time between Belgrade and the Cote d’azur, he said his family “can reasonably be considered related to the highest European royalty and aristocracy”.
But far from being a Balkan royal, Mr Cernetic is an Italian who was born in Trieste, on the border with Slovenia, and now lives in Turin. His apparent fantasy world began to crumble when a hotel owner in Italy’s Puglia region went to the police to complain that Mr Cernetic had enjoyed a week of lavish hospitality without paying.
The “prince” had allegedly told the hotel to send the bill to the Macedonian embassy in Rome, but the embassy denied all knowledge of him.
When police moved in to investigate, they found a collection of bogus passports, coins, medallions, diplomas and diplomatic passports.
Police accuse Mr Cernetic and an accomplice of engineering “an elaborate pantomime” with the help of websites, Facebook profiles and bogus recognition by real and imagined heraldic organisations.
They had conned their way into being given “accommodation and gifts by prestigious Italian and European resorts,” the carabinieri claimed.
Emilio Romani, the mayor of Monopoli, hosted Mr Cernetic at a function last summer.
“I console myself with the knowledge that I was not the only one, given that this character also met mayors throughout Europe as well as show business personalities,” he said.
The alleged con man previously posed as a food writer, persuading upmarket restaurants to give him free meals.