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'Darius Guppy' was convicted of defrauding Lloyd's of London insurance market of £1.8 million during the early 1990s, together with firearms offences relating to a robbery of gemstones in New York City, as well as VAT offences in connection with a gold smuggling operation between the UK and India.

Contents

Early life

Lloyd's fraud

Assault

Recent years

Further reading

References

Early life

Guppy is the grandson of an Iranian ayatollah and Iran's foremost philosopher on his mother's side. On his father's side he comes from a noted family of colonialists in the British West Indies, including the naturalist Robert Guppy, after whom the fish is named.
He was educated at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, Eton College, and Magdalen College, Oxford where he got a first class degree in History and French. In his second year, he became a member of the notorious Piers Gaveston Society, as well as the Bullingdon Club[1]. He was the best man at Earl Spencer's wedding to model Victoria Lockwood; Earl Spencer was also his best man. He was a close friend of the Conservative MP Boris Johnson as well as Count Gottfried von Bismarck.

Lloyd's fraud

Guppy was convicted in 1993 of having staged a jewellery robbery in New York and subsequently claimed for the insurance on the gemstones he (falsely) said had been stolen. He was sentenced to prison for five years. The sum he was said to have obtained was £1.8 million. Guppy claimed to have spent the money or given it away.

Assault

Shortly after the robbery in NYC, but before his arrest, Guppy was recorded telephoning Boris Johnson and asking him for the address of ''News of the World'' journalist Stuart Collier who had reported on Earl Spencer's private life. Guppy had wished to retaliate by assaulting the reporter. On the tape, Johnson agreed to help after being reassured that the reporter would not be seriously injured. The tape transcript was serialised in ''The Guardian's
diary column, which thereafter took to referring to Johnson as ''The Jackal''.

Recent years

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, he resided at Garranlea House, New Inn, County Tipperary, Ireland. He is currently thought to be residing in South Africa and/or the Middle East.
In May 2006 it was alleged that Guppy gave his former friend, the Earl Spencer, a beating having lured him to his home in Cape Town, South Africa. Guppy is said to have become incensed upon learning that Spencer had repeatedly attempted to seduce Guppy's wife, Patricia, the former manager of an English escort agency, while she was living in a cottage on Spencer's estate at the time of Guppy's incarceration ^[1].

Further reading

★ Roll of the Dice, , Darius, Guppy, Blake Publishing, 1996, ISBN 1-85782-159-9

References

1. Barton, Fiona . "The revenge of deadly Darius." Daily Mail. 18 Aug. 2006. 19 Aug. 2007 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=401320&in_page_id=1770.