Cesc Fabregas’s love rival wins courtroom combat towards £4.5m courtroom invoice after turning to lifetime of crime | EUROtoday
An “inadequate” businessman who descended into a lifetime of crime after his spouse dumped him for Premier League legend Cesc Fabregas has received a combat towards a £4.5million courtroom invoice.
Elie Taktouk, 49, underwent a traumatic and high-profile divorce after his spouse, Lebanese mannequin Daniella Semaan, left him for then Barcelona midfielder Fabregas in 2011.
Following the divorce, Taktouk launched into a marketing campaign of fraud, conning property traders out of their money, which he spent on his legal professionals’ payments, hire, his youngsters’ faculty charges, and to purchase a Porsche.
He claimed he did nothing fallacious, however was convicted in 2021 of 9 counts of fraud and two of utilizing a false instrument at Southwark Crown Court and jailed for seven years.
He was then hauled earlier than the courts once more and in November 2023 was handed a £4.5million confiscation order, stripping him of the proceeds of his crime.

But he appealed and has now had the order overturned after senior judges heard he won’t be fairly the multi-millionaire the confiscation decide thought he was.
Fresh proof from his brother Dr Wassim Taktouk recommended that removed from having an curiosity in important household wealth, Taktouk had in truth been reduce out of his father’s will and no proper to any household cash.
Sitting on the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Edis, Mr Justice Saini and Judge Anthony Leonard KC have now quashed the confiscation order and despatched it again to be reconsidered in gentle of the contemporary proof.
Elie Taktouk married Miss Semaan, now 49, in Lebanon in 1998, however they cut up 13 years later when she left him for Spanish ex-Arsenal and Chelsea star Fabregas, 37.
In his divorce he was ordered to pay her £1.4m and in addition misplaced the £5.5m household house in Belgravia to his ex and Fabregas after failing to dam its sale to the footballer on the Court of Appeal.
Taktouk’s crimes have been linked to the acquisition and deliberate redevelopment of a £7.5m condominium in Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge, between 2015 and 2017.
The flat was purchased utilizing bridging finance, with half of the required money portion stumped up by traders who had been launched to Taktouk by an middleman.
However, the undertaking was a failure after issues with the freeholder, with the condominium finally being bought for under £5.5m at public sale and the traders shedding £2.5m.
During a earlier Appeal Court listening to, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith mentioned that, throughout the undertaking, Taktouk had repeatedly diverted traders’ cash to his personal accounts, which he used to spend on hire, faculty charges, a automotive and his legal professionals’ payments.
He used solid paperwork and faked invoices, and misled them concerning the well being of the undertaking, telling them a regular mortgage had been obtained, quite than bridging finance which ran up £61,000-a-month in curiosity.
After changing into suspicious, the traders paid for an investigation into Taktouk’s dealings, leading to a personal prosecution being introduced and him being jailed.
The crown courtroom heard medical proof which recommended that Taktouk is “inadequate and submissive in aspects of his character,” with the sentencing decide agreeing.
At Southwark Crown Court in November 2023, a confiscation order within the sum of about £4.5m was made after a decide concluded that was the good thing about his crimes and that he had not proved he had entry to much less.
The decide discovered that Taktouk had an curiosity in family-owned belongings which he had not been truthful about throughout the confiscation proceedings.
But the case went on to the Court of Appeal final month after his brother got here ahead with new proof, casting doubt on Taktouk’s entry to household wealth.

Dr Wassim Taktouk instructed the courtroom that his businessman father had died in 2022 and that his remaining will in 2016 left nothing to his brother Elie.
He mentioned that, till his father’s loss of life, he knew nothing about household belongings, however that since then he had found they’re comparatively nugatory and quantity to far lower than the confiscation order sum.
He had been estranged from his brother, partly as a result of he blamed him for leaving their father in monetary difficulties in his later years, and took little curiosity within the legal proceedings.
He instructed the courtroom his brother had “no legal interest” in any of his father’s property or in every other household belongings of which he was conscious.
Giving judgment, Lord Justice Edis mentioned Dr Taktouk’s proof was “capable of belief” and that he had proven himself an “honest witness,” who had himself been significantly damning of his brother’s conduct.
“If anything, Dr Taktouk in his witness statement is even more damning about his brother’s credibility than was the judge and it is therefore common ground before us that the appellant is not to be believed about anything relevant to this case,” he mentioned.
Continuing, he mentioned: “It is undoubtedly capable of belief that [Dr Taktouk] has acquired knowledge of his father’s true wealth since he became his executor in December 2022.
“This is a course of which started then, and has continued because the conclusion of the confiscation proceedings.”
That meant there is “believable proof” which might show that the amount of money Taktouk has access to is “considerably much less” than the £4.5m he was mentioned to have benefited from in relation to his crimes.
He quashed the confiscation order and despatched the case again to Southwark Crown Court to be thought-about in gentle of the contemporary proof from Taktouk’s brother.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cesc-fabregas-wife-elie-taktouk-b2692873.html