An Indian-origin couple are caught up in a divorce battle which includes a £160,000 ticket on the futuristic first commercial flight into space on British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s famed Virgin Galactic, The Daily Mail and The Daily have Telegraph reported.
Meera Manek has taken her husband, Ashish Thakkar, to the UK High Court this week to dispute his claims that his assets are worth just £445,532. According to the Daily Telegraph the 33-year-old food writer and blogger insists that her husband is in fact a billionaire.
Speaking to the Daily Mail newspaper, a source said: “The Virgin Galactic flight will be discussed in court. It is an asset Ashish still holds and will be considered as part of the investigation into his total wealth. Meera will demand the cost of the ticket be counted in his assets. She could demand he cashes it in”.
Thakkar was among the first to sign up for Branson’s dream project of launching the first commercial flight into space. The full amount of the tickets are paid up front but the tickets on Virgin Galactic are fully refundable up until the date of the flight.
The UK High Court will now decide over the course of a five-day hearing which began on Monday what Thakkar’s assets are worth and a further trial will then determine how much Manek should receive as part of the divorce settlement.
Thakkar is a Dubai-based businessman who runs the Mara Group and was born in the city of Leicester in the UK. His family were among the thousands of East African Indians who came to the UK after being deported by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 1970s.
The 35-year-old married Manek in 2008 but the couple separated in 2013. His soon-to-be ex-wife claims her estranged husband is the beneficiary of a complex series of companies held offshore. But he has told the High Court that the beneficiaries of the Mara Group – an IT, banking and property group – were his mother and sister.
‘The Sunday Times Rich List’ had estimated Thakkar’s wealth at 500 million pounds in 2015 but he was missing from the list in 2016. Justice Moor is due to rule on Thakkar’s real wealth this week.
Last July Mr Thakkar lost an opening skirmish when Mr Justice Moor ruled that the pair should not finalise a divorce until decisions had been made on how much Miss Manek should get. In the Family Division of the High Court in London Mr Justice Moor ruled in her favour. The judge said Miss Manek might be at a disadvantage if she was fighting as an ex-wife rather than a wife.
Mr Thakkar's parents had been forced to leave Uganda in the early 1970s to escape Idi Amin's exile of the 'non-African community'. They had lost everything and 'started again' in the UK, working in factories then starting their own business, lawyers said.
Mr Thakkar was born in Leicester in 1981. His family had returned to Africa in 1993 and settled in Rwanda - shortly before hundreds of thousands were killed in a genocide.
The judge was told that Mr Thakkar had left school at 15 with no qualifications and started to trade in computer hardware after his parents lent him about £3,500. Mr Francis said Mr Thakkar had 'joined forces' with his parents and other family members to create a collection of companies known as the Mara Group.
But Mr Francis said Mr Thakkar did not own shares in the Mara Group holding company. He said shares were owned by Mr Thakkar's mother and sister. The judge heard that the 'beneficial ownership' of the holding company was 'hotly disputed'.
Mr Thakkar is chairman of the United Nations Foundation global entrepreneurs council and founded the Mara Foundation in 2009, which serves as an online mentorship portal for young African entrepreneurs. Three years ago he was appointed to the advisory board of technology company Dell. In 2013, he became the first African to be named in Fortune magazine's annual 40 under 40 list, with total assets said to be in excess of $1bn and employees across 21 African countries.
While Ashish Thakkar suddenly claims he is worth only half a million dollars, yet Wall Street Journal estimates that he may be worth $30 m.
This turn round in Ashish Thakkar's wealth has appears to have had a major tumble in just a few months.
Now he says all the wealth that was formerly attributed to him by his own PR company and media belongs to his mother and sister!! So why did he not make that clear before?
When everyone was welcoming as a super rich billionaire, why did not clarify that his wealth is not even a fraction of a billion dollars? What do the media and his PR company have to say about possible misrepresentation. What do his business partners have to say?
Is this all because Ashish wants to not pay out his dues in the divorce settlement? He needs to come clean.
Ashish is a devotee of his Guru, Sant Morari Bapu who teachings are of keeping high morals and truth.
