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COPYRIGHT 2004 The Denver Post
Byline: Jason Blevins
Oct. 31--In Colorado, Marise Cipriani has spent the past nine years sculpting a 5,000-acre playground with skiing, golf and homes at Granby Ranch, 90 miles northwest of Denver.
A soft-spoken and agile businesswoman, she has won admirers in Grand County and within Colorado's ski industry.
A hemisphere away in her home country of Brazil, life is tumultuous.
Her husband of 25 years, Antonio Celso Cipriani, is shepherding the sale of her family's broken airline, Transbrasil, while facing accusations that he looted the company of millions of dollars.
Celso Cipriani also faces government-led investigations into allegations of illegal money transfers.
No charges have been lodged.
The Ciprianis passionately deny everything. They blame fired Transbrasil employees and a Brazilian press obsessed with the family's connections to high-ranking politicians.
A recent audit launched by a potential buyer of Transbrasil will prove all the allegations false, they said.
Marise Cipriani, 47, called the last four years the most painful of her life.
"I won't bring my children to Brazil anymore," she said recently, sitting with her husband in a coffee shop near their home in Boulder, soon after returning from Brazil on a red-eye flight.
The Ciprianis openly discussed the trouble in Brazil. But they view it as a distraction -- both to their Granby Ranch development and to their pending deal to sell Transbrasil.
"Eventually, the truth will be known," she said.
Marise's father, the late Omar Fontana, founded Transbrasil in 1955 as a way to ferry his father's processed livestock from rural ranches to market...
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