Darius Guppy
Encyclopedia
Darius 'Darry' Guppy is a British-Iranian businessman who, together with Benedict Marsh, was convicted of fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...

, theft
Theft
In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...

 and false accounting in February 1993. Guppy was jailed for staging a faked jewel robbery and claiming £1.8 million from the insurers, part of London's Lloyd's
Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's, also known as Lloyd's of London, is a British insurance and reinsurance market. It serves as a partially mutualised marketplace where multiple financial backers, underwriters, or members, whether individuals or corporations, come together to pool and spread risk...

 insurance
Insurance
In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...

 market.

Early life

Darius Guppy's mother was the Iranian author and singer Shusha Guppy, who died in March 2008. His grandfather on his mother's side was the philosopher and theologian Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammed Kazem Assar, who held the chair of Philosophy at Tehran University and was a direct descendant of the Prophet; his maternal cousin, another Assar grandson, is Hooman Majd. His father is Nicholas Guppy, a writer and explorer. On his father's side he is a descendant of Lechmere Guppy
Robert John Lechmere Guppy
Robert John Lechmere Guppy was a British-born naturalist after whom the guppy is named...

, the naturalist who discovered the eponymous fish
Guppy
The guppy , also known as the millionfish, is one of the most popular freshwater aquarium fish species in the world. It is a small member of the Poeciliidae family [females long, males long] and like all other members of the family, is live-bearing....

, as well as the inventor Sarah Guppy
Sarah Guppy
Sarah Guppy, née Beach was an English inventor who contributed to the design of Britain's infrastructure and developed several domestic products.-Early history and inventions:...

, Thomas Guppy, the engineer and business partner of Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS , was a British civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards including the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship; and numerous important bridges...

, the explorer Amelia Guppy, Sir Francis Dashwood (founder of the Hellfire Club
Hellfire Club
The Hellfire Club was a name for several exclusive clubs for high society rakes established in Britain and Ireland in the 18th century, and was more formally or cautiously known as the "Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe"...

) and the medieval Plantagenet family. Guppy was educated at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle
Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle
The Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle is a large French primary and secondary school situated in South Kensington, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London...

, Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

, and Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

 where he got a first class degree in History and French. In his second year, he became a member of the Piers Gaveston Society
Piers Gaveston Society
The Piers Gaveston Society is a secret dining club at the University of Oxford with membership limited to 12 undergraduates. It is named in honour of Piers Gaveston, favourite and supposed lover of King Edward II of England. Its members have a reputation for indulging in bizarre entertainments and...

, as well as the Bullingdon Club
Bullingdon Club
The Bullingdon Club is a socially exclusive student dining club at Oxford University. The club has no permanent rooms and is notorious for its members' wealth and destructive binges. Membership is by invitation only, and prohibitively expensive for most, given the need to pay for the uniform,...

. He was the best man at Earl Spencer
Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer
Charles Edward Maurice Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer, DL , styled Viscount Althorp between 1975 and 1992, is a British peer and brother of Diana, Princess of Wales...

's wedding to model Victoria Lockwood, his first wife; Lord Spencer was his best man in return. He was a close friend and boxing nemesis of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British journalist and Conservative Party politician, who has been the elected Mayor of London since 2008...

, as well as Count Gottfried von Bismarck.

Raised as a Christian, he is now a Muslim.

He is married, has a daughter and two sons and lives in Cape Town

Criminal activity

Guppy's fraud in New York was a fake jewel heist, intended as retribution against Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's, also known as Lloyd's of London, is a British insurance and reinsurance market. It serves as a partially mutualised marketplace where multiple financial backers, underwriters, or members, whether individuals or corporations, come together to pool and spread risk...

 after his father lost his home and money in the Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's, also known as Lloyd's of London, is a British insurance and reinsurance market. It serves as a partially mutualised marketplace where multiple financial backers, underwriters, or members, whether individuals or corporations, come together to pool and spread risk...

 financial crisis of the 1990s. Guppy and his business partner, Benedict Marsh, hired a man to fake a robbery, discharge a firearm and tie them up. The crime occurred without hitch and his company was paid out by Lloyd's of London for the supposed stolen jewels within a few weeks of the robbery occurring. The offence did not come to light until over a year later, after a police informer who had acted as an accomplice had been arrested attempting to imitate the pair. Guppy was sentenced to 5 years in jail. The presiding judge at his sentencing, which occurred 3 years later, stated: "…The offences were in my view extremely well planned and very carefully executed enterprises". At his trial in its opening speech the Prosecution described the matter as: "bold, well-researched and meticulously executed".

Personality

The Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

reports that Darius Guppy's acts of retribution are legendary since, according to Boris Johnson, he lives by a "Homeric code of honour, loyalty and revenge". He brawled with the brother of Princess Diana, Earl Spencer
Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer
Charles Edward Maurice Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer, DL , styled Viscount Althorp between 1975 and 1992, is a British peer and brother of Diana, Princess of Wales...

, to defend the honour of his wife Patricia. At university, he engaged in a feud with a landlord. In 1990, he undertook to beat up a tabloid journalist who had been attempting to smear members of his family. During a telephone call he asked Boris Johnson to provide the journalist's address. The address was never provided, and the attack never took place, but a tape of the conversation was leaked to the press. Darius claimed the fake jewel robbery too was an act of vengeance as his father had lost the family fortune with Lloyd's of London.

In 2009, breaking a thirteen year silence, Guppy claimed 'Britain has become an "urban hell" and a dispenser of "moral poison" whose citizens are enslaved by a "culture of consumerism".'

In 2010 in an article published by the Sunday Telegraph he compared the activities of the banking industry with those of counterfeiters

Writings

Guppy has worked as a poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, having been praised by Christopher Logue
Christopher Logue
Christopher Logue, CBE is an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival. He has also written for the theatre and cinema as well as acting in a number of films. His two screenplays are Savage Messiah and The End of Arthur's Marriage...

, and wrote his autobiography, Roll the Dice in 1996. In this, he describes his illustrious ancestors and the family name of Gupa meaning "bright in battle". This background inspired him and he says that, "Boldness and cheek were essential ingredients for success." But the book was not well-received by critic Roger Clarke who, writing for The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

, summarised it as a "horrific hybrid. His faults are glaringly magnified by the dumb journalese, his more iconic and unusual qualities entirely dwarfed by the book's money- garnering glee."
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