NEW YORK, Sept 1 — A couple of weekends ago, Paolo Zampolli received a text message from Melania Trump, the wife of the Republican candidate for president, urging him to give her a call. The next day, Zampolli, a former modelling agent who had discovered the Slovene 20 years ago in Milan, listened as Melania Trump expressed anguish over a gossipy report in the British tabloid The Daily Mail accusing her and Zampolli of operating an escort service in the 1990s.
“This is outrageous,” Melania Trump said on the call, according to Zampolli, explaining that she was considering filing a suit against The Daily Mail for making false and defamatory statements. He said she sounded “extremely disturbed.”
Zampolli, 46, sounded less than disturbed as he spoke over a recent lunch of pasta in his Gramercy Park town house, which is decorated with works by Canaletto, de Chirico and Picasso. In his monogrammed dress shirt and Italian-accented English, the onetime mainstay of New York gossip pages called the report “rubbish” and “disgusting,” but he also seemed to relish his return to the public eye.
He spoke emphatically about his central role in an article last month exploring Melania Trump’s visa history (“reprinted in 550 publications around the world”) and had lined up more interviews about the Daily Mail article later in the day.
By stepping back into the spotlight, Zampolli, a tireless self-promoter of mysterious means, brings into the 2016 presidential race an explicit reminder of the company the Trumps and Clintons kept in the behind-the-velvet-rope heyday of fin-de-20th-siècle New York. For two couples often accused of having an exceptionally transactional worldview, Zampolli is both Zelig and an open-collared emblem of the social waters in which they swam.
He secured Melania Trump’s visa to the United States and introduced her to her future husband at a 1998 party he hosted at the Kit Kat Club. (Zampolli’s parties have featured an alligator, tiger cubs and models at nightclubs blowing kisses at Fashion Television cameras.)
He flew with Donald Trump on his jet to attend the mogul’s wedding at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. There, he said, “I was introduced to Hillary by Huma,” referring to Huma Abedin, whom he said he knew from events in New York.
By then, he said, he had already met Bill Clinton “many, many, many” times. He called Bill Clinton’s former adviser Doug Band “Dougie” and used to be close to Ronald Burkle, the billionaire investor who was once a close friend, private-jet provider and business partner of Bill Clinton. (Bill Clinton “was not coming to parties with me and the models,” Zampolli said.)
The Clinton campaign, Donald Trump and Burkle declined to comment about Zampolli. But Melania Trump wrote in a statement last Thursday: “I have known Paolo Zampolli since 1995 when we first met at a modelling agency in Milan. He loved my portfolio and encouraged me to expand my career to New York City. Paolo was a very professional agent and still remains a friend today. The defamatory statements reported by The Daily Mail are 100 per cent false.”
These days, Zampolli has traded in the fashion business for real estate and diplomatic pursuits. In 2013, he became, by appointment, the United Nations ambassador of Dominica, a country of which he is not a citizen. A Brazilian model, Amanda Ungaro, his wife of a decade and the mother of his young son, herself became ambassador of Grenada to the UN, also by appointment.
In his office, along with pictures of him posing with Bill Clinton and Donald Trump’s jet, there are hundreds of framed photographs of him with dignitaries. His passion now, he says, is sustaining the life aquatic, and he has started an organisation called We Are the Oceans (“The ocean dies, we die”).
An only child, Zampolli was raised in a wealthy Milanese family and briefly ran a toy company inherited from his father (who died when Zampolli was 18) before deciding Milan was “too small” and selling it to a group under the control of Silvio Berlusconi.
Zampolli had his eye on other amusements. In 1994, he organised the Look of the Year contest in Ibiza, Spain (“Sponsored by Replay Jeans,” he said, out of habit). He then became friendly with John Casablancas, the founder of Elite Model Management, who suggested he move to New York to work in the modelling business.
He rented an apartment in Union Square and met Donald Trump, whose grandiosity he admired and who, like him, was a fixture on the city’s nightclub circuit.
“We both have a common interest,” Zampolli said. “We both like beautiful things.”
Zampolli drank Diet Cokes with Donald Trump, a teetotaller, in the exclusive upstairs area of the hot spot Moomba and joined him at other celebrity and model hangouts like Bowery Bar. He also travelled the world scouting talent for his agency and met Melania Trump at a Milan casting call.
Zampolli recalled that he asked her, “Would you like to come to New York to try the market?” where, he explained, she could make more money. “I would be very interested,” he said she replied.
“She was a very beautiful girl with her head on her shoulders,” Zampolli said.
In late 2004, Zampolli’s fortunes in the modelling business had faltered and he lost a public auction to buy Elite Model Management. After taking in a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, he squeezed into a small banquette at his favourite restaurant, Cipriani Downtown, where he often ate twice a day, with the Trumps and David Copperfield, the illusionist and one-time boyfriend of the model Claudia Schiffer.
He had lost his top model, and Donald Trump told him: “If you lose your supermodel, you go out of business. But if I lose my superintendent, I have a thousand looking for that job the next day.” He added that Donald Trump told him: “Paolo, you are too good for the fashion industry. You should come work with me.”
He looked at Melania, who smiled.
Zampolli entered the real estate business as Donald Trump’s director of international development. (“Ciao, Paolo! Donald’s Matchmaker Goes From Pin-Ups to Penthouses” a New York Observer headline read.)
He had some success, but he also found Donald Trump to be a tough boss. And when Zampolli negotiated a deal to buy his dream home in Trump Park Avenue, Donald Trump vetoed it, saying, “I need much more,” Zampolli said.
Zampolli said he soon left Donald Trump because the developer stopped developing and “there wasn’t much to do because there was no inventory.” Instead, he started shuttling around clients in a Rolls-Royce and helicopters as the founder of Paramount Group. The company made headlines for using former models as brokers to sell luxury apartments.
Back then, Zampolli explained his thinking to CNBC. “The gorgeous ladies,” he said. “They meet the most rich and powerful people of the world, and some of them, they keep this connection.” — The New York Times
