Daily Mail, Friday, August 16, 2019 Page 31
QQQBoard Of Trustees (which works
‘for an open, globally connected,
secure, and trustworthy internet
for everyone’), she spoke of the
years spent in her father’s
publishing business:
‘Both of my parents had a strong
work ethic, which they instilled in
me and my brothers and sisters
when we were very young. They
also communicated a very clear
understanding that advantages
always come with responsibilities
— that there was no such thing as
a free ride.’‘FIREBALL’ LOST £50M
AND WED ILLUSIONIST
Isabel, 68, is the
second twin
Once described in
The Jerusalem Post
as ‘a fireball’ who is
‘always in your face’,
Isabel was always the
Maxwell to watch.
She never wanted to
join the family firm, so after gradu-
ating from Oxford with a degree in
modern languages, followed by a
masters from edinburgh, she
became a TV reporter.
In 1981, she moved to californiato work in TV before making a film
set in 1968 starring rock singer neil
Young. ‘It wasn’t eT,’ she said,
‘... more a labour of love.’
But technology was her future.
She and twin christine co-founded
one of the earliest internet search
engines, known as Magellan,
in 1992.
In 1996, they sold it for shares in
a rival company excite — which
rocketed in value, giving the sisters
their joint £100 million fortune,
before dipping again.
But despite being worth an esti-
mated £50 million in the 1990s, she
was declared bankrupt in 2015.
She was married twice. Her first
husband was U.S. film-maker Dale
Djerassi, with whom she has a son,
and then she wed Magellan
co-founder David Hayden.
Her third ‘husband’, illusionist Al
Seckel, was once a significant
player in the californian literary,
academic and celebrity scene. He
was famous for holding parties for
the great and good. Jeffrey epstein
was a friend.
In 2009, the two men organised a
science conference called Mind-
shift on epstein’s private island
Little Saint James.
Isabel and Seckel ‘married’ inMalibu in 2007, but their union was
never legal as he had forgotten to
file the papers to annul the second
of three previous marriages (to
Denice Lewis, a former model who
appeared in music videos for Bryan
Ferry, elton John and cliff Richard.
She became an artist specialising
in memorial paintings in which the
ashes of the deceased are mixed
with the pigment.)
Similarly, Seckel had forgotten
to repay countless debts over
the years that resulted in endless
legal proceedings.
One law suit, brought by ensign
consulting Ltd, a firm based in the
Virgin Islands in the caribbean,
accused both him and Isabel of
perpetrating a fraud involving ‘the
purchase of antique rare books
and a portrait of Sir Isaac newton
painted in 1689’.
In 2015, Seckel was found dead
below a cliff near their home in the
village of Saint-cirq-Lapopie in
France’s Lot Valley. Isabel still lives
in the South of France.HEARTRENDING LOSS
Karine, the middle sister
DIeD of leukaemia aged just three
in 1957.WIFE SOBBED AS
HE WAS ARRESTED
Ian, 62, the
‘fall guy’ brother
TAUnTeD merci-
lessly at home — his
father would ridicule
him in front of visit-
ing friends. When he
joined the family
business, he was compared unfa-
vourably to his younger brother,
Kevin. In the aftermath, of their
father’s death, Ian, then 35, and
Kevin, 32, assumed control of the
company and stood trial for their
part in their father’s £460 million
pension fraud.
They were acquitted, but the
Maxwell name was mud for years
and business opportunities were
limited to overseas ventures. Ian’s
first wife was an American former
college basketball star and model
called Laura Marie Plumb.
They met when she moved to
London to help set up a TV cable
company. The couple married in
1991 — the year of Robert Maxwell’s
death — and the ensuing media
attention put Laura under great
strain. On the day that Ian and
Kevin were arrested, she wasphotographed sobbing. The couple
divorced in 1996.
next, he married Tara Dudley
Smith, the daughter of a Jockey
club steward and ex-Army officer.
But that relationship also ended.
He found happiness with cecilia
French, 58, director of public pro-
tection at the Home Office.
Recently, after pursuing business
opportunities in property, energy
and telecoms, mostly outside the
UK, Ian and Kevin said they’d felt
the urge to do something for the
greater good. So three years ago,
in the middle of the Greek finan-
cial crisis, they launched an organ-
isation similar to the Prince’s Trust
in Greece which has raised millions
of euros and helped to launch sev-
eral hundred businesses.BRITAIN’S BIGGEST
EVER BANKRUPT
Kevin, 60, the
youngest brother
THe cleverest son
and driving force of
the family, Kevin was
crestfallen by his
father’s death, saying
that he ‘missed his
presence and ability
to dominate’. He admitted to being
totally in awe of him.
The only Maxwell sibling ever to
express remorse in public for the
fallout from Robert Maxwell’s
crimes, Kevin made reference to the
‘moral burden I will bear for the rest
of my life’. His first wife, Pandora
Warnford-Davis called her father-in-
law Robert the ‘fat fraudster’.
When, in June 1992, Kevin was
arrested and charged with fraud
after hundreds of millions disap-
peared from the Maxwell empire’s
employee pension funds, she
appeared at the window of their
home at dawn and shouted: ‘P***
off, or I’ll call the police!’ only to
realise the early morning callers
were the police.
In 2007, they divorced after 23
years and seven children together.
Pandora was last heard of living in
Oxford, renting out a room through
Airbnb. Soon after his arrest, Kevin
became Britain’s biggest ever bank-
rupt when a £407 million bankruptcy
order was made against him.
The bankruptcy was discharged
in 1995, following the mandatory
three years. And, after an Old Bailey
trial that cost taxpayers £12 mil-
lion in legal aid, he was acquitted
of fraud a year later — even though
a subsequent Whitehall report
concluded Kevin bore a ‘heavy
responsibility’ for what happened.
In 1998, he went on to co-found
media company Telemonde, a
U.S.-based commercial vehicle for
what he hoped would be ‘the
Maxwell comeback story’. It was
not to be. When Telemonde floated
in 1999, Kevin looked on course to
becoming a multi-millionaire; on
paper he owned a seven per cent
stake, worth £16 million.
But by 2001, the company had
debts of more than £100 million
and failed. Kevin then moved into
high-end commercial property.
His venture came tumbling down
in 2011, when he was disqualified
from being a director for eight
years. The same year, Vincent and
Robert Tchenguiz, two tycoons he
shared an office with, were arrested
by the Serious Fraud Office. Today,
Kevin is working again with Ian in
their Greek charitable venture.
Robert Maxwell once said: ‘The
thing I’d most like to see invented
is a way of teaching children and
grown-ups the difference between
right and wrong.’ considering how
some of his own turned out, it was
perhaps the most prescient thing
the old rogue ever said.Bankruptcy,
sudden death,
huge fortunes
made and lost —
the shattering
legacy of all
the children
in thrall to their
monstrous
father Robert
The cursed family in the 1960s:
Back row l-r, Ian, Isabel, Robert
Maxwell, Kevin and Christine.
Front row l-r, Philip, mum
Betty, Ghislaine and AnneРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's V1News" VK.COM/WSNWS