Pay up or face jail, judge tells Barclay
A High Court judge has told Sir Frederick Barclay he will go to jail unless he makes an immediate payment of £245,000 to his ex wife.
The amount covers costs and legal fees, but does not even touch the £100m the property and publishing tycoon was ordered to pay in their divorce award.
However, the judge said he was “unable to conclude to the criminal standard that [Frederick Barclay]… had the means to pay” the £50m that his former wife Lady Hiroko Barclay should have received last year.
A High Court judge has told Sir Frederick Barclay he will go to jail unless he makes an immediate payment of £245,000 to his ex wife.
The amount covers costs and legal fees, but does not even touch the £100m the property and publishing tycoon was ordered to pay in their divorce award.
However, the judge said he was “unable to conclude to the criminal standard that [Frederick Barclay]… had the means to pay” the £50m that his former wife Lady Hiroko Barclay should have received last year.
Barclay has said he has no access to any money, despite having an estimated worth of several billion. He claims all the wealth has been put into family trusts, adding that he lives on handouts from his nephews and daughter.
The judge, Sir Jonathan Cohen, said “it would make little sense for Barclay’s nephews, who have been assisting him financially, to obstruct the payment”, not least as they had said they were keen to protect their uncle from the threat of imprisonment.
He added that Barclay “needed to do no more than ask for the money and he would have received it”, but instead he had willingly “neglected to pay the sums”.
Barclay was accused by Lady Hiroko, his wife of 34 years until their divorce last year, of transferring all his wealth to his daughter and to a complex series of trusts “in order to avoid paying any tax”.
The Times (£)
The FT (£)
The Guardian
