SIR MARK THATCHER is facing a fresh attempt by an oil-rich African regime to sue him in the London courts for his part in a botched coup.
His involvement in funding a gang of mercenaries distressed his mother, Baroness Thatcher, and contributed to the break up of his marriage.
The millionaire businessman had to leave his home and business interests in South Africa after pleading guilty to funding mercenaries who plotted to overthrow President Obiang, the dictatorial leader of Equatorial Guinea. The President’s lawyers will this week ask the Court of Appeal to allow him to seek damages against the alleged backers of the plot.
Sir Mark, 52, was fined £265,000 and given a four-year suspended sentence by a Cape Town court a year ago after agreeing to co-operate with investigators. His mother had posted the £167,000 bail. His criminal record meant that the US authorities banned him from joining his wife, Diane, and children, Michael, 16, and Amanda, 12, at their home in Texas.
The couple are divorcing, and Sir Mark is searching for a new home abroad. He is now trying to secure residency in Geneva, Switzerland, where he is working as a financier, having been rebuffed by the Monaco authorities, who will not renew his temporary residency when it expires in June.
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Associates of Sir Mark, who inherited his baronetcy on the death of his father, said that he is managing a fund worth millions of pounds in Geneva. “He divides his time between Geneva, Monaco and London,” an associate said. When he is in London he lives at the Belgravia home of Lady Thatcher. “Mark is a constant source of strain to his mother,” the associate said.
He faces more embarrassment as the subject of a film, Coup, written by the satirist John Fortune, which will portray him as “a bit of a git”.
His prospects of finding a refuge could be jeopardised if lawyers for President Obiang win the right to sue a number of UK-based businessmen whom he accuses of funding the gunmen who planned to assassinate him. President Obiang has reportedly drawn up a list of names of wealthy Britons who he alleges were involved in bankrolling the coup.
Among them is Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, the disgraced former Tory party deputy chairman, who, investigators claim, received a number of phone calls from the key financier of the coup attempt, planned for March 2004.
Lord Archer, who has denied any involvement, was sucked into the controversy after a payment from a J. H. Archer of $134,000 (£74,000) was deposited into the bank account of Simon Mann, an Old Etonian former SAS officer who led the failed coup. He was later jailed for seven years in Zimbabwe.
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The High Court refused President Obiang’s original attempt to pursue his alleged enemies in the British courts, but lawyers say that they are confident about their appeal.