Moise Safra, a Brazilian banking billionaire, died Sunday, reportedly from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 79. According to Glamurama.com, which first reported the news of Moise’s passing in Brazil, the billionaire was hospitalized at the Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo, which has among its founders the Safra family, and has an auditorium named after him.

Born into a wealthy Syrian Jewish banking family in Aleppo, Moise sold his half of Brazilian bank Banco Safra plus stakes in other Safra-owned banks in New York, Luxembourg and other locations to his brother, billionaire Joseph Safra, in 2006, for a sum estimated at $2 billion. Joseph and Moise’s brother Edmond, who died in 1999 in an apparent arson attack at his Monte Carlo penthouse, had a separate multibillion-dollar fortune, part of which he left to his wife, Lily Safra.

The Safras were recently named by FORBES as the second richest family in Brazil, with a combined net worth of $20.1 billion. Moise alone was worth an estimated $2.2 billion, according to our latest billionaires list in which he placed as the world’s 835th richest individual. The family’s banking history originated with caravan trade between Aleppo, Alexandria and Constantinople during the Ottoman Empire. The Safras relocated to Beirut after the First World War because the city was home to a thriving Jewish community. After facing anti-Jewish riots in Beirut following the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the family moved to Brazil in 1955, where they started working by financing letters of credit for trade in Sao Paulo.

In 1956 the family divided their businesses, with Edmond settling in Geneva to set up a private bank, the Trade Development Bank. His brothers chose to stay in Brazil. Edmond also founded the Republic National Bank of New York in 1966, which he sold to HSBC in 1999 along with its sister company Safra Republic Holdings for $10.3 billion.

Moise made news last year when he reportedly partnered with Chinese real estate billionaire Zhang Xin to acquire a 40% stake in the General Motors GM +0.31% Building in Midtown Manhattan. The deal valued the property at $3.4 billion, and the two billionaires reportedly paid $700 million in cash, plus assumed debt. He also paid $810 million in 2012 for an office building in London. A community center being built for Syrian Jews on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and scheduled for completion this year will bear Moise’s name.

Moise is survived by his wife, Chella Cohen Safra, and five children: Jacob, Azuri, Edmundo, Esther and Olga. His burial took place at noon Sunday at the Cemitério Israelita do Butanta in Sao Paulo.

(Source: Forbes)