The 48-year-old prince complains through his London lawyers that the sale was conducted in an “inappropriate and uncommercial manner.”
The auction lasted six days and covered 10,000 items spread over 15 acres in 21 warehouses; they included crates of chandeliers, gold-plated toilet-brush holders and tons of marble, teak and sandalwood - all assets of Jefri’s former company. “The more unusual the item, the crazier the bidding,” says Andrew Duckworth of Smith Hodgkinson, the U.K. company that ran the auction. Much more than the $7.8 million raised would have been collected if the sale hadn’t been held “in Borneo in the holiday month of August,” mutters Christopher Grierson, one of the prince’s lawyers. The target: $50 million.
Jefri, younger brother of the sultan of Brunei, last year settled accusations that he embezzled $15 billion from the Brunei Investment Authority when he was chairman, from 1984-'98. Since the settlement he has lived in homes in London and Paris on a mere $300,000 a month - not such a generous amount, really, when you consider that he has four wives and 35 children. The prince used to spend an average of $747,000 a day on, among other things, 2,000 luxury cars, 17 planes, numerous gem-encrusted watches, a handful of palatial mansions and a 152-foot yacht named Tits. A former finance minister, Jefri could be described as an extreme Keynesian.
