MORE than two years after Edouard Stern, the wealthy banker, was found shot dead at his home in Geneva wearing a latex suit during an apparent sadomasochistic sex session, the tranquil world of Swiss finance was rocked by fresh scandal last week as lawyers in his murder trial swapped claims of prostitution and intimidation.

The first public hearing on the case, in which Stern’s blonde mistress Cécile Brossard, a 38-year-old Frenchwoman, has confessed to killing him, was supposed to decide what evidence was admissible, including recordings of telephone calls. It turned into an angry courtroom clash, with her lawyers revealing new details from the investigation.

Lawyers for the Stern family argue that the murder was premeditated, while Brossard claims it was a “crime passion-nel” – that she killed him in a fit of passion.

In February 2005, colleagues worried at having heard nothing from the 50-year-old Stern found his body, dressed in a latex suit and wearing a harness, a hood over his head, at his penthouse apartment in a chic Geneva neighbourhood. Stern, ranked the 38th most wealthy Frenchman and nicknamed “the little prince of finance”, had been shot four times.

He had promised to marry Brossard, his mistress of four years, before giving her a gift of $1m (£504,000). On February 14, 2005, he blocked the payment and broke off relations with her. Police quickly made Brossard, who lived in the picturesque resort of Clarens on Lake Geneva, a suspect. After the murder, she took a taxi to Milan air-port, flew to Australia and returned to Zurich 24 hours later.

For the next 10 days she stayed at home, taking calls from the late banker’s relatives and friends. She told one girlfriend: “If I’d been there, I would have used my body as a shield.”

Arrested in March 2005, she led police to the mooring from which she threw three weapons stolen from Stern’s home on the night of his death. He collected military memorabilia and was a passionate game hunter.

At the hearing in Geneva last week Brossard appeared in public for the first time since her arrest. Dressed all in white, including her boots, she sat silently and wiped away tears with a handkerchief while lawyers for the Stern family delved into her past as a call girl.

Marc Bonnant, one of the lawyers, described Brossard as “cunning and money-seeking” and as “a tart having fuelled the fantasies of a 50-year-old man” who had become dependent on her. She went by the name of Sophie when seeing clients at the plush Hotel Scribe in Paris but was known as Alice “when she played the dominatrix in Geneva”. Before meeting Stern, she would charge €6,000 (£4,350) for a weekend with a client, the lawyer said.

He quoted recordings of telephone calls, found in a box at Brossard’s home in France, including a passage in which she advises acquaintances seeking new thrills to try elaborate sex games. She asked for the $1m when Stern asked for her hand in marriage. “I know only one place where you pay upfront; that’s hotels used by prostitutes,” Bonnant said.

Stern decided to get the money back, a decision that was to prove fatal, he added: “She went into a terrible rage. She left, taking her combat gear – tights, a dog-collar, a latex suit and other accessories – with her.”

According to Bonnant, Brossard told the prosecutor: “I killed him because during a sex game he told me, ‘A million dollars – that’s expensive for a whore’.”

Brossard allegedly shot Stern first in the head, then twice in the chest and one last time in the forehead. Brossard entrusted her response to Pascal Maurer, her lawyer, who pledged to reveal “the true face” of the banker who had morally “harassed a fragile woman to the limit”. Her liaison with Stern had led her “to anorexia, to her own moral and physical degradation”. She had been “ready to make any sacrifice to satisfy the fantasies of her lover”.

Stern was “a skilled hunter who had spotted his quarry” and his aim was to humiliate his mistress. “He is a manipulator who uses his kindness and his false romanticism. But when she wanted to leave him, he threatened her and stuck a knife in the wall two fingers away from her ears,” Maurer said.

Recorded phone conversations revealed their tormented relationship. Stern told her: “How I love you! My heart is exploding. I didn’t know one could love so much.” He added: “I’m sad that I can’t teleport myself and hold you in my arms.”

In a less romantic message, Stern said: “I don’t trust you . . . I vomit on you. And I’m going to harm you.” He did not take her to parties. “You don’t really think I’m going to spend my life with . . . you,” he said. In another recording he said: “You’d have been one of the bitches in a concentration camp.” The investigation into the murder is continuing, with a psychiatric report on Brossard due early next year and the questioning of new witnesses, including the philosopher Pascal Bruck-ner, one of her former lovers.

The full trial is expected to begin late next year.

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