The rich are different than you and me

The estranged wife of a property millionaire who claims his £400m fortune has evaporated called today for him to “hear the clang of the prison gates” behind him after he failed to comply with a court order to explain where his money has gone.

Michelle Young, 45, accused her husband Scot of feigning mental illness to avoid providing a detailed account of the disappearance of his nine-figure portfolio of stockbroker belt mansions and other assets, which he says has collapsed to such an extent that rather than being a Rolls Royce-driving magnate he is now penniless and being pursued by creditors for £27m.

Lawyers for Mr Young, 47, admitted before a judge in London’s High Court that he was still unable to provide documentation to back up his claim to be broke despite being told at a hearing in June this year that he faced a six-month jail term unless he could provide the accounts to prove his financial collapse.

The court heard that that the tycoon, who has been described as a “fixer” for Russian oligarchs and counts several British billionaires as close friends, had suffered mental health problems which resulted in a week-long hospital stay after he had tried to go through his papers to provide the evidence of his demise.
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David Balcombe QC, for Mrs Young, said the mother-of-two was now facing eviction from her luxury home in Regent’s Park because her husband had defaulted on the £10,000-a-month rent, even though she suspects he actually owns the property. Mr Young has also stopped paying the £36,000-a-year school fees for their children Scarlet, 16, and 14-year-old Sasha, the court heard.
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Prior to his claimed downfall, Mr Young had prospered from his impeccable network of contacts, supposedly including Bill Clinton, to become a multi-millionaire. He sold one of his collection of high-value homes to Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian plutocrat, for £19m on the Wentworth Park Estate in Egham, Surrey.

The British tycoon, who said he could only afford to be represented at yesterday’s hearing thanks to a £50,000 loan from the restaurateur Richard Caring, owner of The Ivy, also counts the entrepreneur Sir Tom Hunter and retailer Sir Philip Green among his close friends.

After meeting his wife in 1995, the couple settled down to a life of luxury, shuttling between their mansions in England and a yacht in Monaco. But after the marriage broke down in 2006, Mrs Young claims her husband’s wealth mysteriously vaporised within a matter of months.

Philip Marshall, for Mr Young, said he had apologised for his failings and promised to comply with the court order in the future but underlined he was sincere in his insistence that he was penniless. Adding that his client was “not wilfully in default” of the court, he said that the pursuit of his creditors meant that Mr Young was in reality worth “minus £27m”.

The case continues.

–Tycoon seeks more time to explain missing millions

Left Party Celebrates While Greens Quarrel

For some reason this wasn’t reported on the BBC this morning…

The Left Party was celebrating its historic election result on Sunday night but for the Greens there was disappointment. While the Left Party’s position as a protest party seems to have gone down well with voters, the Greens had to constantly explain which party they wanted to govern with.

Even the illuminated red supermarket sign above their heads matched their party color. On Sunday evening Oskar Lafontaine, Gregor Gysi, Lothar Bisky and Klaus Ernst gathered for a moment outside the party venue in renovated brewery in the trendy Berlin district of Prenzlauerberg and celebrated another victory for their Left Party. Just a few meters away their supporters were cheering the election projections as they came in, while the four top party bosses beamed like schoolboys, flinging their arms around each others necks and patting their arms. “In Bavaria we are over 6 percent,” Ernst, who hails from the southern state, says to Lafontaine. The party boss pretends to be baffled. “What?” says Lafontaine, before they all laugh and head into the election party.

The Left Party have a lot to laugh about this election night. They have reached double digits, securing 12.4 percent of the vote, a marked improvement on their 2005 result of 8.7 percent. And they also did well in state elections in Brandenburg and Schleswig-Holstein. “We have broken the sound barrier and have double digits,” Bisky told the cheering supporters while Gysi described the result as “historic.”
‘The SPD Needs a Rebellion’

Lafontaine allowed his fellow party leaders to speak first. For almost 10 minutes he stood there speechless on the podium. He looked left and right and straight ahead and the smile never once left his face. Laftontaine knows that the Left Party’s triumph is above all his own success. “We want the left-wing camp to be stronger,” Lafontaine tells the jostling crowd of supporters — but for that there first of all has to be a left-wing camp.

It is an exhortation to the SPD and Gysi was even clearer in his choice of words. “The SPD now needs a rebellion and it has to make itself social democratic.”

For the Left Party this election night is a clear affirmation of their campaign: They have been re-elected to parliament with a clear growth in support while the SPD has suffered a historic defeat. That means that the Left Party will expect a clear swing to the left in the SPD before they will countenance cooperating with it in the future. “We will stay on our path, the SPD has to change its path,” said the party’s deputy leader, Ernst, who is a former Social Democrat. Otherwise the SPD faces even further losses in the future, he warned. “Then at some stage they will drop to 15 percent and the last one to leave can turn out the light,” he said. Ernst is certain that the SPD will soon draw the necessary consequences from the election debacle: “This will lead to a change of leadership and direction in the SPD.” It is clear what kind of change in direction the Left Party wants to see the Social Democrats go in, they have said it often enough — move away from the Hartz IV welfare reforms introduced under the previous SPD-Green coalition and an end to the Bundeswehr deployment in Afghanistan.

There was still a lot of applause left for one of the great figures from the SPD’s past. The Left Party wants to “dare more democracy,” Lafontaine said, referring to the famous quote by former Chancellor Willy Brandt — but that is only possible with a “new economic and social order.”

–Der Spiegel