Maggie death, no end to the Thatchers’ corruption

While former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was given a final farewell last week, there are still many who speak the name of one particularly notorious member of Thatcher’s family in hushed tones. But who is this family member and how did he trade on Margaret Thatcher’s name?

Mark Thatcher, born in 1953, is the son of Margaret and Dennis Thatcher, and the twin brother of Carol Thatcher. Mark’s embarrassments to his mother started shortly after she became the country’s PM in the 1979 general election.

According to the Times of London, Mark pocketed an $18 million commission in relation to the £45 billion Al-Yamamah arms deal in 1985, a controversial arms sale by British arms producer BAE systems to Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, Mark Thatcher had been secretly paid commission by construction firm Cementation, for an Oman contract which his mother had lobbied for. According to the reports, he received a huge commission despite confidential warnings to Whitehall from the then ambassador to Oman, Ivor Lucas.

The Guardian newspaper said once that Mark Thatcher has made a career of “ruthlessly exploiting his famous surname and access to power… to set him on the road to riches.” The British paper described the former PM’s son as a “wheeler-dealer”.

For all the money Mark Thatcher traded on his mother’s political influence, and more importantly for weakening Thatcher’s position in the office, Sir Bernard Ingham, the then PM’s press secretary, suggested Mark to leave the country prior to the 1987 general election.

So in the mid 1980s, Mark Thatcher moved to Dallas, Texas, where he was prosecuted for financial scandals, including tax evasion, later in 1996.

Mark Thatcher’s use of his position as the Prime Minister’s son was made clearer after The Guardian disclosed he got the British taxpayer to pay for 24-hour British bodyguards and unprecedented security at his home in the US.

According to the paper, Margaret authorized the unprecedented use of British taxpayers’ money to fortify Mark’s luxurious home in Texas. She also authorized the home secretary to conceal from MPs the £117,000 cost of his special branch bodyguards while in Britain.

So following the financial scandals in the US, Mark Thatcher moved to Cape Town, South Africa. It was then in 1998, when Margaret and Denis’ son was involved in another scandal involving loan sharking in the country. According to the reports, Thatcher’s loan shark company offered unofficial loans to hundreds of police officers, military personnel and civil servants.

Mark Thatcher’s illegal activities, however, were not limited to illegal commissions and tax avoidance. When in South Africa, he pleaded guilty in relation to 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d’état attempt organized by his friend, Simon Mann.

The charges were related to “possible funding and logistical assistance” in relation to the attempted coup, aimed at toppling President Obiang. Thatcher was then fined 3,000,000 South African rand(£215000), and received a four-year suspended jail sentence.

“[Thatcher] was not just an investor; he came completely on board and became a part of the management team” of the coup plot, said Mann during Mark’s trial in 2008.

It was right after this incident when Mark Thatcher, known in his homeland as a “mum’s boy”, was questioned by the government authorities on whether he should be stripped of his inherited “baronet” title.

Mark Thatcher inherited his father Denis Thatcher’s hereditary baronetcy title in 2003. The Baronetage was created for Denis Thatcher by the British Queen when his wife Margaret Thatcher resigned as the British Prime Minister in 1990.

Mark Thatcher attended her mother’s funeral service at St. Paul’s Cathedral on April 17, where hundreds of Britons turned their backs on Margaret Thatcher’s coffin as a sign of anger against her policies, which they believe has wrecked British working class in the 1980’s and after.