Kevin Maxwell

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Person.png Kevin Maxwell  Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
(businessman, spook)
Born1959
NationalityUK
Alma materMarlborough College, Oxford University
Parents • Robert Maxwell
• Elisabeth Maxwell
SpousePandora Warnford-Davis
Member ofJeffrey Epstein/Black book
Relatives • Ian Maxwell
• Christine Maxwell
• Isabel Maxwell
• Ghislaine Maxwell
UK businessman and member of the spooky Maxwell family, in Epstein's Black Book

Kevin Francis Herbert Maxwell (born 1959) is a British businessman and member of the spooky Maxwell family. In the 1990s, Maxwell was acquitted of charges relating to financial crimes connected with the business practices of his father, publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell.[1] Formerly disqualified from being a company director, he has been declared bankrupt twice. He is co-founder of the thinktank Combating Jihadist Terrorism.

Background

Kevin Maxwell (born 1959) is the eighth child of Elisabeth (née Meynard), a French-born Holocaust scholar, and Robert Maxwell, the Czechoslovak-born British publishing tycoon and Israeli spy. His father was Jewish and his mother was a French Protestant of Huguenot descent.[2] Kevin is one of nine siblings (two of whom died in childhood). These include his older siblings Christine Maxwell, Isabel Maxwell, and Ian Maxwell along with his younger sister Ghislaine Maxwell.[3] The family resided at Headington Hill Hall from 1960, where the offices of Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press were also located.

Maxwell was educated at Marlborough College and Oxford University.[3]

Career

Maxwell, along with his brother Ian, joined the family publishing business. He spent most of his working life before 1991 employed by his father, including a spell as chairman of Oxford United F.C.[4] Robert Maxwell was known for his domineering disposition and this included behaviour towards his children. Editor Mike Molloy, who had worked for Robert Maxwell at the Daily Mirror and The European, described a conversation he had with Kevin on a flight to Moscow, where Kevin detailed his discontent in working too much with no time left for seeing his family.[5]

Maxwell was Chairman of Maxwell Communications Corporation and at Macmillan Inc. at the time of his father's death in 1991.[3] Robert Maxwell was found floating in the sea near the Canary Islands in proximity to his yacht Lady Ghislaine in November 1991. After his father died, it quickly emerged that there were severe financial troubles with the Maxwell empire that Kevin and Ian Maxwell were connected, in particular with the pension funds for thousands of Mirror Group employees. Following his father’s death, and the collapse of the Mirror Group media empire, Kevin Maxwell became the biggest personal bankrupt in UK history with debts of £406.5 million in 1992.[6] He was later tried and, in 1996, was acquitted of fraud charges arising from his role in his father's companies.[7]

British courts determined that Coopers & Lybrand made gross errors during their 1990s audit of the Maxwell group of companies and fined Coopers & Lybrand a record 3.3 million pounds.[8]

The bankruptcy was lifted three years later, and he co-founded media company Telemonde,[9] which later failed. He entered into a further arrangement over debts he accrued subsequently. After his discharge from bankruptcy in 2005, Maxwell went into the property industry where he has been involved in establishing large property deals, including the sale of Earls Court Exhibition Centre and Olympia, and the purchase of Stables Market in Camden Town.[10]

On 8 July 2011, as a result of an Insolvency Service investigation into the collapse of Syncro, a Manchester-based construction company, Maxwell was disqualified from being a company director for eight years.[11][12]

Maxwell announced, in September 2018, that he and his brother Ian had founded a UK think tank called Combating Jihadist Terrorism (CoJit) with the aim of better understanding terrorism and its causes.[13][1]

Personal life

Maxwell met Pandora Warnford-Davis while both were attending Oxford.[14] They married in 1984 and have seven children together.[14] The family lived in the Elizabethan Moulsford Manor, near Didcot in Oxfordshire in 2005.[15] The couple separated in 2007,[16] and later divorced.[17]



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References

  1. a b Rogers, Taylor Nicole (6 July 2020). "A death in the Atlantic, a media empire that once had $4 billion in debt, and a yacht named Lady Ghislaine: Take a look at Ghislaine Maxwell's family history". Business Insider. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  2. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/15/garden/at-lunch-with-elisabeth-maxwell-questions-without-answers.html
  3. a b c http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1220335.stm
  4. https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/my-own-goal-mark-lawrenson-1568089.html
  5. Molloy, Mike (2016). The Happy Hack – A Memoir of Fleet Street in its Heyday. Kings Road Publishing. ISBN 9781786060518.
  6. Slicker (21 August 2009). "In the City". Private Eye. Pressdram Ltd. p. 31.}
  7. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1251147.stm
  8. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/212530
  9. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1328576/The-familys-changing-fortunes.html
  10. http://www.bdonline.co.uk/the-fixer/3121077.article
  11. Spence, Alex (9 July 2011). "Kevin Maxwell disqualified as a director for eight years". The Times. p. 49.
  12. http://rnn.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/Press-Releases/Syncro-Limited-three-directors-disqualified-for-total-of-20-years-66977.aspx
  13. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/09/robert-maxwells-sons-say-tycoon-was-to-meet-boe-the-day-he-died
  14. a b https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jun/23/pressandpublishing.theguardianwomenspages
  15. https://www.scotsman.com/news/uk-news/mystery-buyer-steps-in-to-stop-maxwell-s-house-repossession-1-727152
  16. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/robert-maxwell-20-years-on-where-are-they-now-6258034.htm
  17. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ian-and-kevin-maxwell-robert-maxwell-was-a-crook-but-to-us-he-was-dad-and-our-rock-lrgb6rg08


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