Cesc Fabregas’s love rival wins court fight against huge £4.5m court bill

Elie Taktouk married Daniella Semaan but they split 13 years later when she left him for ex-Arsenal and Chelsea star Fabregas. An "inadequate" businessman who descended into a life of crime after his wife dumped him for Premier League legend Cesc Fabregas has won a fight against a £4.5million court bill. Elie Taktouk, 49, underwent a traumatic and high-profile divorce after his wife, Lebanese model Daniella Semaan, left him for then Barcelona midfielder Fabregas in 2011.

Following the divorce, Taktouk embarked on a campaign of fraud, conning property investors out of their cash, which he spent on his lawyers' bills, rent, his kids' school fees, and to buy a Porsche. He claimed he did nothing wrong, but was convicted in 2021 of nine counts of fraud and two of using a false instrument at Southwark Crown Court and jailed for seven years. He was then hauled before the courts again and in November 2023 was handed a £4.5million confiscation order, stripping him of the proceeds of his crime.

But he appealed and has now had the order overturned after senior judges heard he might not be quite the multi-millionaire the confiscation judge thought he was. Fresh evidence from his brother Dr Wassim Taktouk suggested that far from having an interest in significant family wealth, Taktouk had in fact been cut out of his father's will and no right to any family money. Sitting at the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Edis, Mr Justice Saini and Judge Anthony Leonard KC have now quashed the confiscation order and sent it back to be reconsidered in light of the fresh evidence.

Elie Taktouk married Miss Semaan, now 49, in Lebanon in 1998, but they split 13 years later when she left him for Spanish ex-Arsenal and Chelsea star Fabregas, 37. In his divorce he was ordered to pay her £1.4m and also lost the £5.5m family home in Belgravia to his ex and Fabregas after failing to block its sale to the footballer at the Court of Appeal. Taktouk's crimes were connected to the purchase and planned redevelopment of a £7.5m apartment in Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge, between 2015 and 2017.

The flat was bought using bridging finance, with half of the required cash portion stumped up by investors who had been introduced to Taktouk by an intermediary. However, the project was a failure after problems with the freeholder, with the apartment eventually being sold for only £5.5m at auction and the investors losing £2.5m. During a previous Appeal Court hearing, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith said that, during the project, Taktouk had repeatedly diverted investors' money to his own accounts, which he used to spend on rent, school fees, a car and his lawyers' bills.

He used forged documents and faked invoices, and misled them about the health of the project, telling them a standard mortgage had been obtained, rather than bridging finance which ran up £61,000-a-month in interest. After becoming suspicious, the investors paid for an investigation into Taktouk's dealings, resulting in a private prosecution being brought and him being jailed. The crown court heard medical evidence which suggested that Taktouk is "inadequate and submissive in aspects of his character," with the sentencing judge agreeing.

At Southwark Crown Court in November 2023, a confiscation order in the sum of about £4.5m was made after a judge concluded that was the benefit of his crimes and that he had not proved he had access to less. The judge found that Taktouk had an interest in family-owned assets which he had not been truthful about during the confiscation proceedings. But the case went on to the Court of Appeal last month after his brother came forward with new evidence, casting doubt on Taktouk's access to family wealth.

Dr Wassim Taktouk told the court that his businessman father had died in 2022 and that his final will in 2016 left nothing to his brother Elie. He said that, until his father's death, he knew nothing about family assets, but that since then he had discovered they are relatively worthless and amount to far less than the confiscation order sum. He had been estranged from his brother, partly because he blamed him for leaving their father in financial difficulties in his later years, and took little interest in the criminal proceedings.

He told the court his brother had "no legal interest" in any of his father’s estate or in any other family assets of which he was aware. Giving judgment, Lord Justice Edis said Dr Taktouk's evidence was "capable of belief" and that he had shown himself an "honest witness," who had himself been particularly damning of his brother's conduct. "If anything, Dr Taktouk in his witness statement is even more damning about his brother’s credibility than was the judge and it is therefore common ground before us that the appellant is not to be believed about anything relevant to this case," he said.