Banana billionaire wins legal battle
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A man nicknamed "the billionaire banana" and "baron of Ecuador" won his three-year legal battle for control of the family fortune yesterday after a London court dismissed claims from his two sisters.
Alvaro Noboa, a front-runner in Ecuador's presidential race, has spent millions of pounds on lawyers to defend allegations that he made fraudulent misrepresentations to secure control of the banana business for himself.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Langley, sitting in the High Court, rejected the evidence of the sisters and held that their evidence was untruthful and had been exposed as "inconsistent, lacking coherence and wholly unreliable".
The case, initially filed in New York, was transferred to London after an application by Mr Noboa's solicitors. Last month, Mr Noboa took a week out of his presidential election campaign to appear on a video link from Quito to answer accusations that he had cheated his sisters out of their share of the family business.
The case has cost an estimated £21m in legal fees, and featured appearances from some of the highest paid lawyers in the world.
It has been compared to the Thyssen saga, in which the deceased Swiss industrialist, Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and his relatives are estimated to have spent £17m on lawyers in disputed claims to the family fortune.
The Noboa litigation involves the internecine squabblings of one of the wealthiest families in South America.
The timing could not be worse for Mr Noboa because the case has interrupted the climax to his bid for the Ecuadorean presidency. With nearly half of the votes counted, Mr Noboa, a hardline right-winger, is in second place behind Lucio Gutierrez. Throughout his political campaign, Mr Noboa has tried to distance himself from his court battle with his siblings.
His sisters, Maria Elena and Isabel, claim he used "fraudulent misrepresentations" to help in his campaign to take control of the business. Mr Noboa will continue his bid for the Ecuadorian presidency in the concluding round of elections to be held this Sunday.