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I Left My Heart (and $10 Million?) in Liechenstein.

When's the last time you were accused of stealing $10 million from Afghan royalty and moving it from an offshore account on an English Channel island to another in Liechtenstein?

For West Palm Beach attorney Manley Thaler, I'm gonna say once:

The strange tale of international intrigue has also spawned a criminal investigation in a small island in the English Channel and a civil suit in Palm Beach County Circuit Court.

In each, attorney Manley Thaler is accused of misappropriating millions that the late Afghan leader Abdul Madjid Zabuli left in his will to promote education and culture in his native country. A benefactor of the arts in his hometown of Ithaca, N.Y., Thaler has served on several local philanthropic boards, including the American Red Cross. Now 80, he dined with Britain's Prince Andrew when the queen's son visited Palm Beach in 2007.

According to court records both here and in Liechtenstein, Thaler stripped Zabuli's widow and others of their power over the foundation. He then created a dummy corporation in Liechtenstein, which sits between Switzerland and Austria and is notorious as a place to hide assets.

To finish the deed, he moved $10 million from the foundation that was based in Guernsey, an island state under the British Crown, into the corporation he controlled in Liechtenstein.

Manley is represented by his partner Eileen O'Malley, and the plaintiffs by David Mankuta and Bob Butterworth.

Although I never personally transferred Afghan millions from an English offshore shelter to a tiny European principality, I do vaguely recall a tremendous Who concert on the Isle of Wight, various power struggles involving an iron-clad Doctor that took place in lovely Latveria, and a tiny European war-mongering duchy known as Grand Fenwick.

So it's kinda similar I guess?

Full post as published by South Florida Lawyers on April 13, 2010 (boomark / email).