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How to cope as a washed-up former millionaire mogul? Here's my advice… | How to cope as a washed-up former millionaire mogul? Here's my advice… |
(3 months later) | |
Asil Nadir, inventor of the nadir, is ill in Belmarsh prison. The former millionaire fugitive is in the hospital wing with a heart condition following an unsuccessful attempt to clear his name. His name remains uncleared and requires more clearing than ever. I worry that it'll never get cleared. Some archeologists are sceptical that there's a name under there at all. | Asil Nadir, inventor of the nadir, is ill in Belmarsh prison. The former millionaire fugitive is in the hospital wing with a heart condition following an unsuccessful attempt to clear his name. His name remains uncleared and requires more clearing than ever. I worry that it'll never get cleared. Some archeologists are sceptical that there's a name under there at all. |
Perhaps because he's ill, Nadir seems to have postponed the whole name-clearing project and is focusing on being allowed to go to prison somewhere closer to home: home being Cyprus and closer being Turkey where his 97-year-old mother is also ill. He wants to see her before she dies. Or he dies. Preferably both, I suppose. Which is definitely not the worst aspiration he's ever had. | Perhaps because he's ill, Nadir seems to have postponed the whole name-clearing project and is focusing on being allowed to go to prison somewhere closer to home: home being Cyprus and closer being Turkey where his 97-year-old mother is also ill. He wants to see her before she dies. Or he dies. Preferably both, I suppose. Which is definitely not the worst aspiration he's ever had. |
In order to convince the authorities of the wholesomeness of his relocation plan, he's repaid £150,000 of the £1m that the British taxpayer forked out for his legal costs (although none of the £28.8m he was jailed for stealing) and agreed to renounce his British citizenship. This was to counter one of the objections to his going to Turkey: that the Turks might let him out early and then, as a UK citizen, he'd be free to come back here and hang out in the Ritz stinking the place out with his horrible uncleared name. | In order to convince the authorities of the wholesomeness of his relocation plan, he's repaid £150,000 of the £1m that the British taxpayer forked out for his legal costs (although none of the £28.8m he was jailed for stealing) and agreed to renounce his British citizenship. This was to counter one of the objections to his going to Turkey: that the Turks might let him out early and then, as a UK citizen, he'd be free to come back here and hang out in the Ritz stinking the place out with his horrible uncleared name. |
His situation is odd: he claimed to be penniless (which is why he was granted legal aid) but now he's suddenly got £150k. While on bail awaiting trial, he was living in a £20,000-a-month rented house in Mayfair. The last time he was on bail, in 1993, he fled Britain for northern Cyprus and lived in luxury there for 17 years. Were he to be let out of prison now, I don't doubt he'd claim housing benefit – he seems to be a believer in the welfare state – but, if his previous residences are anything to go by, he'd get absolutely stiffed on the bedroom tax. | His situation is odd: he claimed to be penniless (which is why he was granted legal aid) but now he's suddenly got £150k. While on bail awaiting trial, he was living in a £20,000-a-month rented house in Mayfair. The last time he was on bail, in 1993, he fled Britain for northern Cyprus and lived in luxury there for 17 years. Were he to be let out of prison now, I don't doubt he'd claim housing benefit – he seems to be a believer in the welfare state – but, if his previous residences are anything to go by, he'd get absolutely stiffed on the bedroom tax. |
This often seems to be the way with the former super-rich: they lose their money but somehow cling on to the lifestyle. They may not be able to pay the bills – but they're champagne, caviar and helicopter-servicing bills. They might be millions in debt, but a spare 10 grand always falls out the back of the sofa just as the bailiffs are taking it away. | This often seems to be the way with the former super-rich: they lose their money but somehow cling on to the lifestyle. They may not be able to pay the bills – but they're champagne, caviar and helicopter-servicing bills. They might be millions in debt, but a spare 10 grand always falls out the back of the sofa just as the bailiffs are taking it away. |
This was true of Boris Berezovsky, who met his end in an Ascot mansion, and Robert Maxwell, who fell off a luxury yacht. William Randolph Hearst's crumbling empire had been taken into more prudent hands long before his death, but I don't think anyone ever denied him lobster for lunch. Despite their catastrophic failures and failings, these guys are never found frozen to death in the tunnels under Marble Arch; they don't meet their hacking end on the public ward of an NHS hospital. People who die with nothing are, on paper, millions of pounds richer than the likes of Robert Maxwell were by the end. But, if you've played for high stakes, you get to remain in a high stakes world however much you've lost. The entitlement that comes with great wealth seems to outlast it. | This was true of Boris Berezovsky, who met his end in an Ascot mansion, and Robert Maxwell, who fell off a luxury yacht. William Randolph Hearst's crumbling empire had been taken into more prudent hands long before his death, but I don't think anyone ever denied him lobster for lunch. Despite their catastrophic failures and failings, these guys are never found frozen to death in the tunnels under Marble Arch; they don't meet their hacking end on the public ward of an NHS hospital. People who die with nothing are, on paper, millions of pounds richer than the likes of Robert Maxwell were by the end. But, if you've played for high stakes, you get to remain in a high stakes world however much you've lost. The entitlement that comes with great wealth seems to outlast it. |
But just because the straitening of their circumstances is barely noticeable to the wider community, it doesn't mean that these wounded beasts aren't bitterly aware of it themselves. Here are some of the day-to-day challenges faced by disgraced moguls whose wine cellars have fallen into the hands of administrators – and my advice for coping. | But just because the straitening of their circumstances is barely noticeable to the wider community, it doesn't mean that these wounded beasts aren't bitterly aware of it themselves. Here are some of the day-to-day challenges faced by disgraced moguls whose wine cellars have fallen into the hands of administrators – and my advice for coping. |
Loss of self-esteem | Loss of self-esteem |
On a capitalist planet, the rich walk tall. "We make all this happen," they look around and think. Sudden loss of that status can give you a shrinking feeling – and make your supermodel girlfriend tower over you even more than usual as she explains that it's not you it's her and drives away in one of the bank's cars. A quick self-serving change of moral compass can help here. "What good has all this commerce ever done anyway? I would have done more harm if my business ventures had succeeded. My creditors' losses are a drop in the ocean of pain that is caused by successful corporations." That way you can begin, once more, to look down on people – starting with tycoons less incompetent than yourself. | On a capitalist planet, the rich walk tall. "We make all this happen," they look around and think. Sudden loss of that status can give you a shrinking feeling – and make your supermodel girlfriend tower over you even more than usual as she explains that it's not you it's her and drives away in one of the bank's cars. A quick self-serving change of moral compass can help here. "What good has all this commerce ever done anyway? I would have done more harm if my business ventures had succeeded. My creditors' losses are a drop in the ocean of pain that is caused by successful corporations." That way you can begin, once more, to look down on people – starting with tycoons less incompetent than yourself. |
Fear of murder | Fear of murder |
The speed with which the legal and financial systems bring the perpetrators of large-scale fraud to book may be unhurried compared with the swift vengeance visited upon faltering small businesses, but unofficial forces can be more direct. If you've played a dirty game, you'll have pissed off some dirty playmates, for whom there can be few more satisfying revenges than having you killed – it's the ultimate cure for esprit d'escalier. Worrying about whether an enemy has hired an assassin can spoil even the most comfortable of Learjet trips between failed states. Unless, that is, the foundering of your schemes has made you suicidal – in which case putting a bullet through your head is, like squeezing toothpaste on to your brush, just another thing that can be done for you by someone else. | The speed with which the legal and financial systems bring the perpetrators of large-scale fraud to book may be unhurried compared with the swift vengeance visited upon faltering small businesses, but unofficial forces can be more direct. If you've played a dirty game, you'll have pissed off some dirty playmates, for whom there can be few more satisfying revenges than having you killed – it's the ultimate cure for esprit d'escalier. Worrying about whether an enemy has hired an assassin can spoil even the most comfortable of Learjet trips between failed states. Unless, that is, the foundering of your schemes has made you suicidal – in which case putting a bullet through your head is, like squeezing toothpaste on to your brush, just another thing that can be done for you by someone else. |
Leaves in the swimming pool | Leaves in the swimming pool |
As shell companies and offshore entities and weird secret trusts in the names of your children's pets start to implode one upon the other, it's difficult to keep track of who was nominally employed by what. Then one day you realise your pool guy stopped turning up two months ago and your Olympic-sized swimming arena is no longer resplendent in the colours of a football club you once bought but greened by algae, and clogged with the autumnal droppings of the surrounding parkland. As you stare at the mess be grateful you were never one to be troubled by metaphor and make a mental note not to go swimming with any open wounds. A cleansing dip after a half-hearted cry for help with a Bic is no longer an option: septicemia is not an end anyone would choose. | As shell companies and offshore entities and weird secret trusts in the names of your children's pets start to implode one upon the other, it's difficult to keep track of who was nominally employed by what. Then one day you realise your pool guy stopped turning up two months ago and your Olympic-sized swimming arena is no longer resplendent in the colours of a football club you once bought but greened by algae, and clogged with the autumnal droppings of the surrounding parkland. As you stare at the mess be grateful you were never one to be troubled by metaphor and make a mental note not to go swimming with any open wounds. A cleansing dip after a half-hearted cry for help with a Bic is no longer an option: septicemia is not an end anyone would choose. |
Other people's hatred | Other people's hatred |
This is easier to handle than it sounds. Most aspirant billionaires don't mind putting a few noses out of joint – by which I mean they're sociopathically obsessed with rhinal violation – so, on the way down, the only real difficulty is coping with the change in the nature of the hatred: from envy to contempt, from an abhorrence tinged with grudging respect to one tempered by disdainful pity. If you can add self-pity to the mix then you could be on your way to feeling unfairly put-upon while you continue to sip cognac in a palace. That, like Asil's sojourn in northern Cyprus, can make for a pretty comfortable nadir. | This is easier to handle than it sounds. Most aspirant billionaires don't mind putting a few noses out of joint – by which I mean they're sociopathically obsessed with rhinal violation – so, on the way down, the only real difficulty is coping with the change in the nature of the hatred: from envy to contempt, from an abhorrence tinged with grudging respect to one tempered by disdainful pity. If you can add self-pity to the mix then you could be on your way to feeling unfairly put-upon while you continue to sip cognac in a palace. That, like Asil's sojourn in northern Cyprus, can make for a pretty comfortable nadir. |
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