THE younger brother of the Sultan of Brunei faces the possibility of a British jail sentence after Court of Appeal judges ordered him yesterday to disclose details of how he funds his extravagant lifestyle.

Prince Jefri Bolkiah is engaged in a long-running and bitter legal battle with Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, his brother, and the Brunei Investment Authority (BIA) over his activities during his 13 years as Finance Minister of the oil-rich country.

The Prince was dismissed from his post in 1998 and then accused by the Sultan of embezzling about $15 billion (£8.1 billion) of state funds, a dispute that was initially resolved with an out-of-court settlement in May 2000. As part of the settlement Prince Jefri agreed to hand over most of his assets to the BIA, £3 billion of which were sold during a four-day auction in London in 2001.

However, the BIA claims that the Prince’s continued “lavish” lifestyle, which incorporates homes in London, New York and Paris, said to cost £275,000 a month, proves that he must have additional, undisclosed assets. In May Brunei and the BIA began contempt of proceedings against the Prince at the High Court, which he attempted to resist on the ground that forcing him to disclose how he funds his lifestyle would represent a violation of his right to privacy, protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In the Court of Appeal yesterday, Lord Justice Tuckey dismissed the Prince’s plea as “totally unfounded”, opening the way for contempt proceedings this year. Sitting with Lord Justice Waller, the judge said that the scale of Prince Jefri’s spending since 2000 eliminated the possibility that his lifestyle is sustained by the generosity of relatives or other third parties.

He ruled that the evidence put forward by Brunei and the BIA was clear and unambiguous, and “disclosed reasonable grounds for alleging contempt”.

Prince Jefri is adamant that he has no further financial resources to divulge, but Lord Justice Tuckey stated that relatively few of the bank accounts disclosed to him so far show significant balances.

Brunei and the BIA suspect, he said, that unless the Prince had “won the lottery or had some good evenings in the casino” he was maintaining his extravagant lifestyle using secret funds. The South East Asian country of Brunei is roughly the size of Norfolk and has a population of only 374,000, but its royal family have been made fabulously wealthy by their kingdom’s supplies of natural gas and oil.

Both the Bolkiah brothers have indulged expensive tastes in the past: Hassanal’s palace boasts 1,788 rooms and in 1996 he hired Michael Jackson to serenade him on his 50th birthday, while Jefri once owned a private yacht that he named Tits. The pair are together credited with supplying roughly half of Rolls-Royce’s sales income during the mid-1990s.

However, Brunei’s oil is now in shorter supply and reserves are expected to run out within 30 years. The country was hit hard by the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, and the Sultan has fallen sharply from first place in the world’s rich list. Efforts have been made to diversify the economy by attracting tourists, and last week Hassanal Bolkiah extended his flirtation with democracy by expanding the legislative council he convened in July last year.

With a further court hearing expected within two months, the Sultan’s determination to recoup the missing millions may result in his brother being jailed.

OIL-RICH OUTPOST

A garrison of Gurkha soldiers protects oilfields in the west of the country

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