Story Archive

All Straw

Tagilde Aziz wants her “fair share” of her husband’s 1.1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) in a divorce proceeding. But Asif Aziz says he’s not her husband and doesn’t have a billion pounds. A British court must decide whether either a religious ceremony in Wimbledon (when Tagilde was still married to someone else), or a ceremony in Malawi, established a valid marriage, which would enable it to issue a divorce. The couple has four children. Meanwhile, documents from Tagilde’s side claim Asif, who started a real-estate-investment firm that earned 4.3 million pounds in revenue in a year, has depicted himself as a “man of straw” with a 400,000-pound (US$528,000) annual income and “and has accumulated debts as a result of these proceedings in excess of 600,000 pounds.” (AC/Bloomberg) ...A man who looks rich, but isn’t; a woman who thinks being married is worth half a billion. How is this not a match made in heaven?