Scot Young rose from an impoverished childhood in a grey tenement block in Dundee to enjoy a lavish lifestyle beyond the comprehension of the people he left behind.
Like so much of his life, little detail is known about the early part of his career. By the time he met his future wife Michelle in 1989 he was already in the property business, but had made so little money the couple had to live with her parents in Essex.
In the Nineties a string of immensely lucrative deals in the property and telecoms sectors propelled the couple into a rarefied world of extreme wealth.
His business associates included high street fashion billionaire Sir Philip Green and Scottish entrepreneur Sir Tom Hunter.
At the peak of the couple’s fortunes, when Mr Young’s wealth was said to run into the hundreds of millions, they and their daughters Scarlet and Sasha lived in a nine-bedroom Palladian mansion in Oxfordshire with 200 acres and a retinue of staff.
They also owned properties in Belgravia and Florida, as well as a yacht in Monaco and a private jet.
In later interviews Ms Young described a world of unimaginable excess, although some of her claims were later disputed by Mr Young.
The weekly shop was delivered to the front door directly from Harrods, while one of her three luxury cars was a Hummer used “just to take my dogs to the vet”.
For her 40th birthday he bought her £1 million in Graff jewellery, while another gift was a Damien Hirst artwork bought at auction when he had outbid Hugh Grant. The gilded lifestyle came to an dramatic end in 2006 when Mr Young claimed to have lost all his money in a “meltdown” property deal that went wrong in Moscow.
The marriage broke down at around the same time, triggering seven years of bitter legal warfare that included 65 hearings.
In 2009 Mr Young was given a six-month suspended sentence for contempt of court for refusing to reveal details of his wealth. In January last year the by now bankrupt former multi-millionaire was sent to Pentonville prison for failing to comply with court orders.
Last November a High Court judge assessed his net worth at £40 million and awarded his ex-wife half of that — not a penny of which is believed to have been paid.
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An investigation into Mr Young’s tangled financial affairs is being carried out by insolvency trustees Grant Thornton, and will continue.
