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A BARONESS who handed her £2million fortune to a crooked lawyer may have lost it all after he declared himself bankrupt.
Jacqueline Van Zuylen, who has never worked, trusted Rodney Whiston-Dew, 70, to invest it on her behalf and made him her financial attorney.
She claims he promised her a monthly income from the sum, but was jailed five years later, in 2017, for his role in a £65million tax scam and the payments stopped, the High Court heard.
The Baroness, a former semi-professional dressage rider, says since then she has had to “beg, steal and borrow” to get by and is “very, very, stressed”.
She said she is “financially unsophisticated” and is now suing the ex-lawyer and GBT Global Ltd, an offshore firm of which he was director.
He claims she had lost money on bad investments and he had put the rest in a trust fund on Nevis, in the Caribbean, to preserve it.
He also claims he had tried to get her to curb her £200,000-a-year spending.
Whiston-Dew, who is still in prison and was not in court, has claimed UK judges have no rights to rule over funds held on Nevis.
Judgment for the London case will be given at a later date.
Source: thesun