Brother Hit With £500K Costs After Court Rules Late Restaurateur’s Trust Was a Sham

(Amir Moaven. Photo Credit; Standard News)

The brother of a wealthy London restaurateur has been ordered to pay nearly half a million pounds after losing a bitter High Court battle over his late sibling's £5m fortune.

Property investor and restaurateur Abbas Moaven d!ed aged 45 in 2012, 10 years after marrying birth doula and yoga teacher Gabriela Teixeira.

The couple had two children and lived in a series of high-end properties across desirable London neighbourhoods, including Holland Park and Kensington.

However, following Abbas's d£ath, Ms Teixeira was shocked to discover that his estate, which she and their now-adult children, Elis and Aryan, were set to inherit, could be rendered worthless.

Weeks before his passing, Mr Moaven had signed legal documents declaring that four valuable properties were not entirely his, but shared with his mother and brother, Amir.

This move substantially diminished the multimillion-pound estate she had expected, potentially leaving it without value due to debts.

Ms Teixeira, alongside her children, launched a High Court challenge, arguing that the full value of these properties should be included in her husband's estate, thereby boosting their inheritance to as much as £5m.

Deputy Master Timothy Bowles, the High Court judge, ultimately ruled in her favour. He found that the documents Abbas signed were a sham, designed to prevent his widow from accessing the majority of his wealth after his d£ath, and that the narrative behind their creation was a fiction.

This week, he went on to declare Amir liable to pay the £490,000 legal costs of the case, also holding that Abbas's accountant, Behzad Faiz, and conveyancing solicitor, Marios Robert Pittalis, are jointly responsible for paying £473,000 of the bill, having been complicit in the creation of the sham documents.

Ms Teixeira teaches yoga and also works as a birth doula, a non-clinical professional who provides physical and emotional support to families before, during and after childbirth.

Her husband, Abbas, and his brother, Amir, moved to the UK from Iran in 1982 to live with their father and later began a west London clothing shop called Homeboy together.

They then moved into the then-burgeoning mobile phone market in the mid-1990s and later into restaurants, while also acquiring a series of properties around the capital. Gabriela and Abbas met at his then-restaurant, The Gate, close to Notting Hill Gate Station, and began dating, eventually marrying.

Abbas was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 and d!ed in May 2012, with his last will leaving his estate in third shares to his widow and their two children, Elis Teixeira Moaven, 22, and Aryan Moaven, 19.

The court heard that the estate was substantially diminished because, only weeks before he d!ed and while in hospital in April 2012, Abbas had signed fake trust documents declaring that four properties in his name were actually owned in one-third shares by himself, his brother Amir and their mother, Nazemi Tehran, who has since d!ed.

Gabriela's barrister, Alexander Learmonth KC, argued that the documents were obviously shams, designed by Abbas to prevent his wife or creditors from making a claim to most of his assets after his d£ath.

He pointed to an attendance note from a meeting between Abbas's solicitor, Mr Pittalis, and Amir, held while Abbas was seriously unwell at home and his brother was seeking to regularise their affairs.

According to the lawyers' note, Amir's concern centred on what would happen if Abbas passed away and his wife left with the two children for Brazil, and how they could prevent her from having access to the funds from the property assets.

A subsequent note from a further meeting added that Amir confirmed his main intention was to secure Abbas's children's welfare, as he was certain that any assets passed to Abbas's wife would be dissipated.

Mr Learmonth told the judge the notes established clearly that, if the declarations of trust were really intended to have any legal effect at all, they were entered into with the clear aim of defeating a claim by Gabriela and/or her children against the estate.

He told the judge that Gabriela was anxious to have the properties restored to the estate and receive her inheritance, adding that she is unable to sustain the lifestyle she enjoyed during Abbas's lifetime on her income as a doula.

He described it as deeply unsatisfactory that 14 years later, Gabriela and her two children, now grown from infancy to adulthood, have still not been able to obtain a proper account of Abbas's estate, let alone receive their inheritance.

Allowing the claim in May, the judge dismissed arguments by Amir, now 56, that the four properties, which include Gabriela's former homes in Queen's Gate, Holland Park and Brasenose House, Kensington, as well as a rental property in Maida Hill, were only ever put into Abbas's name for cultural reasons because he was the elder brother.

He said that contrary to the false narrative set out in the recitals to the declarations of trust, the properties are not and never have been held on the informal trusts alleged in those documents, adding that the extrinsic evidence fully supports the view that Abbas has always been the legal and beneficial owner of the properties.

Going on this week to order Amir, Mr Pittalis and Mr Faiz to foot the bill for the court fight, the judge said the declarations of trust were no more than deceitful forms of words, or pieces of paper, designed to convey to those to whom they were deployed that Abbas's estate was very much smaller than it truly was.

He said Amir's position was and is straightforward, noting that he elected to put forward an entirely fictional and dishonest case in order to give credence to the sham declarations of trust.

The judge said Mr Pittalis and Mr Faiz were equally as involved as each other in creating the documents, rejecting Mr Pittalis's claim to have been duped into getting involved by Amir.

He said that far from being duped by Amir, Mr Pittalis was complicit with him and with Mr Faiz in the creation and execution of the sham declarations of trust, and therefore complicit in the creation of the circumstances that gave rise to the trial.

He added that he could see no reason why Mr Pittalis should not be liable for costs over his role in that conduct, and that his liability should correspondingly be joint and several with Amir and Mr Faiz.

He went on to order that the costs be assessed on the punishing indemnity basis, owing to the conduct of the three men in the litigation.

He said the conduct of Amir, Mr Pittalis and Mr Faiz, acting in concert with Abbas, had been manifestly and radically outside the norm, noting that they chose to deliberately put in place sham documents with the intention not merely of misleading those to whom they were deployed, but ultimately of misleading the court.

He said their conduct in respect of the declarations of trust was, from the outset, directed towards creating sham documents that could be sustained in court and that might deceive it, adding that this conduct was central to and causative of the trial, and that, with the dishonest nature of the documents now exposed, they should be liable on the indemnity basis for the costs incurred in exposing the deceitful nature of the declarations of trust.

The full costs bills will be assessed at a later date, but the judge ordered the men to jointly pay £154,800 upfront towards Gabriela and the children's costs, and £318,800 towards costs run up by the administrators of Abbas's estate. A further £17,000 is Amir's sole responsibility to pay.

Partly due to complex tax and debt issues, the exact size of Abbas's estate has not yet been calculated, with lawyers estimating that it could be as much as £5m with the four properties included.