Before starting this article, we should first use the correct quotation:
“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned”.
When William Congreve wrote those words in 1697 in his play “The Mourning Bride” little did he realize he was giving tax advice to errant husbands of the twenty-first century, like Scot Young. Young, a tycoon now fallen on hard times, is at the centre of a bitter £400 million divorce battle with his wife Michelle. The highly acrimonious case has got the whole of Britain in thrall.
Scot Young declared himself bankrupt, owing £2m to the taxman. Claiming to be broke, Scot is unable to give Michelle and their two children any financial help. That having been said, apparently she has received more than £1m from her husband’s friends. Michelle, having lost her privileged lifestyle, was not satisfied. “We are just living one day at a time. He is eating in the finest restaurants with beautiful young models while my girls don’t know their futures”.
She asserts that her husband has salted away large sums, and wants her share. But how can Michelle prove her claim? She can’t. She doesn’t have the resources to track down the money through a maze of concealed deals. However, she knows someone who does. The British tax man!
Scot should have listened to Congreve before giving his old laptop computer to his children Scarlet, 17, and Sasha, 15, to help them study for their exams. Of course he first ‘sensibly’ deleted all his personal files. Mistake! In her fury Michelle got experts to scour the hard disk, and they managed to recover five-years’ worth of encrypted files, containing hundreds of e-mails and other sensitive data on Scot’s financial and property dealings. We can now expect HMRC to unleash its hounds of hell to sniff out any hidden assets, particularly if they can grab a share – and Michelle will grab the rest.
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