Ashish Thakkar, who co-founded Africa banking conglomerate Atlas Mara Ltd. with ex-Barclays Plc head Bob Diamond, lost a ruling over the ownership of family assets in a London divorce case, with a judge questioning Thakkar’s truthfulness.
Judge Philip Moor ruled that Thakkar, and not his mother and sister, was the owner of disputed assets in the divorce. He ruled that the 35-year-old owned 100 percent of Mara Group Holdings Ltd. and other corporate entities.
The result will have ramifications in the proceedings where a judge will have to decide how much Thakkar — described in videos posted on his foundation’s web site as “Africa’s Youngest Billionaire” — is worth. Thakkar says he has assets of 445,532 pounds ($553,000) while his wife, Meera, says he’s far richer.
Thakkar, his father and sister all testified over three days in a bid to persuade the court that Ashish had no control over Mara Group Holdings and Inspire Group Holdings Ltd. Thakkar has argued that the beneficiaries of his companies are his mother and sister, a claim the judge called “a blatant lie.”
‘Palpable Nonsense’
“I regret to say that I consider the whole thing to be palpable nonsense,” Judge Moor said in the ruling handed down Feb. 10 and made public Tuesday. “It follows that I find I have been repeatedly lied to by all three respondent Thakkar witnesses, which has extremely serious consequences for the rest of their evidence.”
Spokesmen for both Ashish and Meera Thakkar declined to comment. The release of the ruling was delayed for more than a week so confidential business information could be redacted.
The decision extends a legal battle over the less than five-year marriage that has cast a spotlight on the entrepreneur. Based on his disclosed public and closely held assets, Thakkar could have a net worth of about $450 million, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“Ashish is clearly a very charismatic and engaging character. He exudes charm and enthusiasm,” Moor said. “He is the entrepreneur and the money maker.”
While the Thakkar case is at the London High Court, similar issues have reached the country’s top court before. The ex-wife of oil trader Michael Prest won a Supreme Court ruling giving her the right to force offshore companies owned by her ex-husband to turn over assets as part of a 17.5 million-pound settlement in 2013.
Prest’s lawyers argued at the time that the courts had no right to “pierce the corporate veil” of his companies to fund the settlement as they were separate entities and unrelated to the marriage.
Uganda
Thakkar’s story began in Idi Amin’s Uganda. His family was among Asian families the dictator expelled in 1972, and moved to the U.K., where Thakkar was born. They returned to Africa when he was a child, this time to Rwanda, where his family lost everything during the genocide in 1994, Thakkar says in his 2015 autobiography, “The Lion Awakes: Adventures in Africa’s Economic Miracle.”
Thakkar’s own success has prompted him to be branded Africa’s youngest billionaire. He’s described that way in a 2013 video on the YouTube channel for his charity, the Mara Foundation.
He is introduced as that at conferences and asked about it in media interviews. At 15, after the family had returned to Uganda, Thakkar sold a laptop to his dad’s friend, triggering the realization he could be a trader. His father gave him $5,000 start-up cash, and he started flying to Dubai to buy cheap computer products, which he sold from a tiny shop in central Kampala.
He expanded his business by setting up a Dubai-based company. He later started a packaging factory in Uganda and partnered with an Indian IT services company to help them gain entry in new markets across Africa, according to his websites.
