Source: UK News
Court has arrained a female bodyguard to the ex wife of Sultan of Brunei for stealing £12million in diamonds then replaced them with worthless replicas worth only £30, a court has been told.
The 35 year old Fatimah Lim, is alleged to have taken the jewellery from Mariam Aziz - the Sultan of Brunei's ex wife - to pay her gambling debts from her house in Kensington, West London.
She is accused of taking a pear-shaped 12.71 blue diamond worth £7.6million and a rectangular 27.1 carat yellow diamond worth £600,000 and a £3.3million diamond bracelet.
Fatimah Lim was allegedly caught when Miss Aziz asked Lim to return the bracelet after she gave it to her for safe keeping.
The court was told Lim later stole and sold the diamonds given to Miss Aziz by the Sultan of Brunei during their marriage.
She replaced them with fakes worth just £300 she had made.
The Sultan of Brunei, one of the world's richest men, and Mrs Aziz, a former airline stewardess who is of Bruneian, Japanese and Scottish ancestry, had four children during their 21 years of marriage.
It was learnt Lim started working for Miss Aziz in 2003 firstly as a badminton coach, but that her role eventually evolved to that of a personal assistant and bodyguard to the mother-of-four.
In her capacity she travelled between her boss's houses in Singapore, or Brunei, or in London.
Mr Patterson added: "The background, sadly, to this case is that Miss Aziz came to consider the defendant to be one of her most trusted employees and considered her essentially as a friend."
The pair would visit casinos across the world, including the Clermont Club in Berkeley Square and Les Ambassadeurs, near Park Lane and such was the trust placed in her Lim "was allowed to become a signatory on Miss Aziz's accounts."
If Miss Aziz reached her credit limit on any of her own accounts, she would be able to use Lim's.
It was at the Les Ambassadeurs casino in May 2008 that Miss Aziz gave her an eight-diamond bracelet worth around $5.5million dollars bought from Graff jewellers in Bond Street for safe keeping.
Two or three weeks later the sultan's former wife wanted to wear the bracelet, but that it could not be found, it was said.
Miss Aziz's staff were spoken to and Lim denied having ever been given the item. Instead suspicions were raised against another housemaid. However, that housemaid claims that Lim had later come to her and said she knew someone who could make replica jewellery.
Lim eventually took the bracelet, as well as another one, to a jeweller in London's famous Hatton Garden.
Giving her name as Sue, but later identifying herself, she claimed she had authorisation from her mother to sell the items.
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