Posted on 03/06/2003 9:27:22 PM PST by HAL9000
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - A US judge ordered Saudi Arabia's King Fahd and members of his family to pay more than 200 million dollars to the estranged wife of a dead Saudi royal following a 20-year legal battle.The court in Los Angeles ordered the payment under a long-disputed 1983 separation agreement between Sheik Mohammed al-Fassi, the eccentric late brother-in-law of Prince Turki bin Abdul Aziz, and his wife Dena al-Fassi.
Dena al-Fassi, 41, filed the suit in late 2001 claiming the Saudi royals should be responsible for covering the 81-million-dollar settlement awarded to her that has ballooned to 223 million dollars with accrued interest.
She was originally awarded the 81 million during the couple's messy split, but her husband appealed and the decision to the US Supreme Court which upheld it and the battle has continued ever since.
Her lawyer Marvin Mitchelson alleged that al-Fassi -- who died in December of an infected hernia at the age of 50 -- evaded payment by shifting assets to other members of the Saudi royal family, including King Fahd.
Because al-Fassi was a member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Turki provided him with "exorbitant amounts of money" to "maintain an extravagant lifestyle," the lawsuit alleged.
Celebrated Tinseltown divorce attorney Mitchelson described Thursday's huge award as a "a drop in the bucket to (the Saudi royals). They have 60 billion dollars alone in New York banks.
"This is perhaps the first decision of its kind that imposes liability directly upon the king of Saudi Arabia and ... holds them accountable," he said, adding he was hoping for the best in collecting the award.
Sheikh al-Fassi, who was born in Morocco, moved to Saudi Arabia when he was 10 and became a distant member of the royal family in the mid-1970s when his sister married a Saudi prince.
He married Dena in 1975 and the couple moved to Los Angeles, where they bought a lavish mansion on Sunset Boulevard which brought him local notoriety when he painted it a vivid shade of green and pushed the limits of art and pornography with his garden statuary.
Mohammed al-Fassi hired an artist to paint genitalia on his outdoor collection of alabaster statues, outraging his posh neighbours.
"Whenever it rained, al-Fassi would have servants put raincoats on the statues" to stop their decorative paintwork from washing off, the lawsuit stated.
The Los Angeles Times reported in 1980 that the 38-room house burned down in a suspected arson attack while neighbours, outraged by the lewd statues and plastic flowers, stood by, shouting, "Burn! Burn! Burn!"
Must have been the plastic flowers that sent them over the edge...
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