MOL
KENSINGTON-A female bodyguard stole rare diamonds worth £12million from the ex-wife of one of the world’s richest men, replacing them for near-worthless replicas, a court was told.
Fatimah Lim, 35, is accused of stealing two large diamonds from the safe at the London home of Mariam Aziz, a former wife of the Sultan of Brunei. She is accused of replacing the pear-shaped 12.71 carat blue diamond - valued at £7.6million - and a rectangular 27.1 carat yellow diamond - worth £600,000 - with replicas worth £150 each, to clear a gambling debt.
The Singapore national is said to have stole the gems from her employer’s £1.7 million home in Kensington, West London, after duping her daughter into letting her borrow them for a few hours. She is also accused of stealing a £3.3 million diamond bracelet after Mariam Aziz gave it to her for safe-keeping while out gambling.
When Miss Aziz wanted it back, Lim denied ever being given it and suspicion fell on a housemaid. Later she stole and sold the diamonds given to Miss Aziz by the Sultan of Brunei during their marriage, with the blue diamond being bought from the Hilton Park Lane jewellers in 1986, the court heard. The Sultan, one of the world’s richest men, and Miss Aziz, a former airline stewardess who is of Bruneian, Japanese and Scottish ancestry had four children during their 21 years of marriage. Gareth Patterson, prosecuting, said: ‘The prosecution case is that this defendant breached the trust that was placed in her by her employer, Miss Aziz.
‘These three items were a diamond bracelet, a large yellow coloured diamond and a large blue coloured diamond. ‘It appears that the defendant may have decided to sell these diamonds, because she - the defendant - had been gambling and needed to clear her debts.’
Isleworth Crown Court heard that after stealing the gems, Lim took them to a jeweller in Hatton Garden to sell, claiming they been a gift from Miss Aziz to her mother, who she claimed had been a PA to the sultan’s former wife. To cover her tracks she had fakes worth just £300 made and put these back into the safe at Miss Aziz’s home, it is claimed. The alleged theft was only discovered in December 2009 when Miss Aziz asked her adopted daughter, Afifa Abduallah, to take the diamonds, which had now been set in rings, back to the Hilton for resizing. Jurors heard Lim started working for Miss Aziz in 2003 firstly as a badminton coach, but that her role eventually evolved to that of a personal assistant and bodyguard to the mother-of-four.
In her capacity she travelling between her boss’ houses in Singapore, or Brunei, or in London. Mr Patterson added: ‘The background, sadly, to this case is that Miss Aziz came to consider the defendant to be one of her most trusted employees and considered her essentially as a friend.’ The pair would visit casinos across the world.