The world’s richest fugitive has lost his last chance to avoid billions being stripped from his assets.
The Supreme Court threw out the last attempted appeal by lawyers representing former Kazakhstan banker Mukhtar Ablyazov.
The decision confirms earlier rulings giving the go-ahead to seize his assets worth billions including his £150 million property portfolio in Britain which includes his £18 million former home in Hampstead.
The multi-billionaire alleged fraudster has been on the run since a High Court judge sentenced him to
22 months imprisonment for serial contempt of court.
He is being sued for $6 billion which is only part of the plundering he is said to have carried out on the BTA bank in his homeland which collapsed with $18 billion debts.
In 2009 Ablyazov fled to Britain to claim asylum and lived with his family in Carlton House, in The Bishop’s Avenue area known as Millionaires’ Row. But the bank’s lawyers pursued him to grab back what they claim he stole and won court orders in London freezing his worldwide assets.
During marathon legal proceedings Ablyazov was described by Mr Justice Teare as lying on oath in a “remarkable and brazen” manner.
A second judge, Lord Justice Maurice Kay, said: “It is difficult to imagine a party to commercial litigation who has acted with more cynicism, opportunism and deviousness towards court orders than Mr Ablyazov.”
When he refused to comply with the orders he was sentenced to prison in February last year. By then the father-of-four had already disappeared but instructed his lawyers to keep fighting in the courts.
The ruling by the Supreme Court justices now means he has no further legal leeway left in Britain. Any attempt to take his case to the European Court is considered to be doomed. Pavel Prosyankin, BTA Bank managing director, said: “The decision marks the end of Mr Ablyazov’s legal manoeuvring and will expedite the enforcement of the significant judgments we have won.”
