KEY POINTS:
The former wife of the Sultan of Brunei was duped out of 2 million pounds ($5.2 million) after falling for a fortune teller's elaborate con.
The bizarre details unfolded when three judges at the Court of Appeal in London ruled against the Sultan's right to anonymity in the case.
The Sultan had argued that, as a head of state, he should not be named in the proceedings. But after he failed to block publicity it was revealed how Mariam Aziz, his former wife, met a fortune teller, Aviva Amir, at a casino in 2003.
The former air hostess, who was divorced from the Sultan that year after a 20-year marriage, came to regard Mrs Amir as a trusted friend and confidante.
Mrs Amir then introduced the Sultan's former wife to a man called Mr Aziz over the telephone.
Lord Justice Lawrence Collins said the man on the telephone and Mrs Aziz went on to develop a "close relationship" without ever meeting. "The claimant and Mr Aziz never met, but over the following months they developed what appeared to be a close relationship conducted by telephone and text message, and involving exchanges of gifts," he said.
The judge said between May and November 2004 Mrs Aziz made bank transfers of more than 1 million pounds ($2.6 million) which were intended for Mr Aziz, and payments of more than £1 million in cash.
But last year Mrs Aziz won a court case against her former fortune teller, maintaining that Mr Aziz, who has never been traced, never existed and it was in fact Mrs Amir who was assuming a fake voice on the telephone.
She claimed Mrs Amir had kept the £2 million and that she also had possession of some cassette recordings recorded by Mrs Aziz and which were said to contain material of a confidential nature.
The case, which was heard in private, ended with Mrs Amir, who got a three-month suspended sentence, being ordered to return the money. Until yesterday the Sultan had not been named in connection with it.
The Court of Appeal judges ruled that nothing embarrassing about the Sultan's private life had been disclosed in the legal action by his former wife.
Just to mention his name was not an "attack" and to ban publicity for this reason would be "a wholly impermissible invasion of the principle of free speech", the court ruled.
In 2005 a High Court judge refused an application for anonymity but continued the privacy order until the case had been heard by the Court of Appeal.
- INDEPENDENT
