The former wife of the Sultan of Brunei has accused her ex-bodyguard of stealing and selling rare diamonds worth £12million, replacing them with worthless replicas.
Mariam Aziz, 55, claims her bodyguard, Fatimah Kumin Lim, 34, ‘appropriated’ a diamond bracelet worth £3.5million, and two diamond rings worth £8.7million, in 2008 and 2009, and used them to pay off her gambling debts.
Mrs Aziz’s lawyer Max Mallin, told the High Court Miss Lim had ‘confessed’ to ‘dishonestly’ taking the gems while they were being kept at her employer’s £1.7million home in Kensington, when being questioned by police in Brunei.
However, he added that Miss Lim now claims that confession was ‘forced’ out of her.
She says she was instructed by Mrs Aziz to sell the diamonds to pay off her own gambling debts which, she claims, had been built up by the former royal in her bodyguard’s name.
The court heard that Mrs Aziz’s adopted daughter, Afifa Abdullah, 26, was tricked into ‘lending’ Miss Lim two precious blue and yellow diamond rings, which were never returned.
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