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The sons of disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell have been linked to a controversial Jersey-based trust named after St. John's Manor.
The Times newspaper reports that it has seen documents that connect Ian and Kevin Maxwell - the sons of the late Mirror Group owner and brothers of Ghislaine, who is standing trial in the US accused of aiding in her former partner Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of minor girls – with the La Hougue Trust.
The documents were among 350,000 papers allegedly found in the squash court of St. John’s Manor in 2012 by the daughter and son-in-law of the Seigneur at that time, John Dick.
Tanya Dick-Stock and her father have been involved in a lengthy legal dispute with each other over access to funds held in family trusts.
Last year, the papers were shared with investigative journalists across the globe by Mrs Dick-Stock, who grew up at the manor, which is traditionally called La Hougue Boëte.
Pictured: Articles published in the international media about the Dick family row.
She is using those documents to support a claim in a Colorado court that her father extracted millions from trust funds intended to support herself and her family, which he strongly denies.
The Times has this week reported that, in relation to Ian and Kevin Maxwell, the La Hougue documents describe “unusual, circular debt arrangements” which “shed light on their “opaque finances”.
The newspaper links them to others named in the papers, including former La Hougue Managing Director Richard Wigley, whom Mr Dick accuses of defrauding the trust.
In a Royal Court case reported by Express in 2018, Mr Wigley admitted that he had fabricated documents and made "untrue statements" while working at La Hougue. At the time, the Royal Court was presented with papers from the year 2000, which appeared to outline 11 methods through which La Hougue was “apparently willing to assist in tax evasion.”
The Court decided it “would not be appropriate” to reach any conclusions about whether Mr Wigley, by that point Panama-based, had committed any criminal offences “in his absence.”
A spokesperson for the Maxwells told the Times that: “Neither Ian nor Kevin has any unaided recollection of La Hougue and certainly were not involved as investors, shareholders, directors, agents or representatives.
They added that, “to the best of their knowledge and belief”, neither of the brothers had ever met Mr Wigley or had any dealings with him.
Following the death Robert Maxwell in 1991 and the collapse of his media empire, Kevin Maxwell was made insolvent a year later after declaring debts of more than £400m. The bankruptcy was discharged in 1995.
In 1996, both brothers were acquitted of fraud charges in relation to their role in managing the Mirror Group pension funds after a six-month trial.
The legal dispute between the family members of the former Seigneur of St. John has been waged in the Royal Court for a number of years.
Court papers released in March showed that Mrs Dick-Stock had been excluded from two family trusts, and that the money in them could not be used to continue legal battles against her father.
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