1 hour ago
3
An ancient estate on the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel is at the heart of a $12 billion lawsuit launched by an American heiress and her husband against some of the world’s biggest banks.
Tanya Dick-Stock, daughter of the late Denver real estate mogul John Dick Sr., and her husband Darrin Stock, allege that banks — including Barclays and HSBC entities, as well as Zedra, a Jersey-based trust — helped her father loot her $350 million trust, as The Post exclusively reported last week.
A key factor in this battle is the return of St. John’s Manor, a 58-acre Jersey estate worth at least $30 million, Gimme Shelter can reveal.
The estate had been held in a separate trust for Dick-Stock and her brother, John Dick II, for around 40 years. But in 2020, the manor house was sold for around £14 million pounds ($19 million) to a retired Jersey-based couple — far less than its original £22.5 million ask. Around £2.1 million pounds ($2.8 million) from the sale was to be kept in escrow for 10 years — for potential future litigation, according to court documents filed by the trustee and submitted to the Jersey’s Royal Court in 2020.
The sale left Dick-Stock devastated.
“This fight was never just about the money,” said a source close to Dick-Stock. “It’s about the house, which is the only thing worth fighting for. It holds Tanya’s memories, her future and her safety. The fight is about saving this place.”
Dick-Stock, 60, has been going to St. Johns Manor since she was 9 years old.
“The Manor and Tanya are imprinted on each other. The best day of her life, her wedding, and the saddest day, her mother’s internment, all [took] place in the chapel on the grounds of St. John’s Manor,” the source said.
The house is also filled with secrets.
During World War II, it was one of the Nazis’ headquarters. There are still shadows of the Nazi occupation all over the island, especially at St. John’s Manor, where machine gun bunkers in trenches still exist right behind its imposing 20-foot-tall front gates.
The manor also held 350,000 “historically significant” documents.
“Some of the biggest frauds on the planet are documented there. That’s why Senate investigators want them,” said the source, who has reviewed them.
The documents stashed in the manor, including a document seen by The Post that outlines eleven ways that La Hougue uses to launder money, are the key to the lawsuit — and to Tanya getting her life back.
“The manor allowed Tanya to get to the truth,” a source said.
In 2012, as Tanya and Darrin prepared for their wedding — looking for a place to store some tiki torches — they discovered the papers inside a locked squash court on the property.
It turns out that Dick Sr. was the beneficial owner of La Hougue, a now-defunct trust company whose clients include convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell’s brothers Ian and Kevin, according to a source who has reviewed the documents. ( “Neither I nor my brother, Kevin…have any unaided recollection of a company called La Hougue,” Ian Maxwell told the Miami Herald.)
Now — as the House Oversight Committee is set to depose Ghislaine Maxwell next month — Senator Ron Wyden, who is investigating how the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein financed his sex trafficking ring, is calling on the Treasury Department to release its files on La Hougue.
“It’s like the manor safeguarded those boxes for Tanya. They hold Ghislaine Maxwell’s secrets, [Jeffrey] Epstein’s secrets and even the old man [Robert Maxwell’s] secrets,” said the source.
The source, who reviewed the documents, added that La Hougue also helped oilmen hide money stolen from the Savings and Loan scandal in the 1980s and helped oligarchs hide billions stolen from Russia. The documents “should really be in the Library of Congress,” the source added.
While Jersey police seized the documents, no one was ever arrested let alone charged with a crime. Dick Sr., who died in 2023 at age 85, maintained his innocence and his wealth.
Officially known as Le Manoir de St Jean La Hougue Boëte, the estate features stables, a chapel, a tennis court, a squash court, a Japanese water garden, a defense tower from the 1780s, and a fleet of Rolls Royces and vintage cars. Built in the 1700s and 1800s, the manor also came with a title, the Seigneur of St. John, which includes feudal privileges, like the right to execute one’s servants. (The title was sold separately for an undisclosed sum, sources said.)
“It’s certainly seen as one of the island’s most prestigious properties,” said John Christensen, a former senior economic advisor to Jersey and co-founder of the Tax Justice Network, who grew up in a 12th-century manor house a mile away.
“[Dick Sr.] put up gates and cannons. He was playing the part of a seigneur and made it more secretive and cut off from the locals, who used to be able to walk around the grounds.”
“People would fly in from all over the world and were whisked away by chauffeur to St. John’s Manor. They were taken in by the power and glamour of it all,” Christensen added.
But the reality is that it was never his.
“It was all a facade,” the source said. “The reason why John Dick resented his daughter so much is because she told the truth about the trust.”
In the case of the trust that held St. John’s Manor, The Manor House Trust, a trustee named Richard Wigley — who worked for Dick Sr. at La Hougue — admitted in 2015 under oath in District Court, Jefferson County, Colorado, that he made up fake loan notes as documented in a 2016 Special Master Report. The extraordinary admission led to his removal from the trust. Dick-Stock tried to investigate further, but her father — who was not part of the trusts and had been explicitly barred from them when they were created — requested her removal from both because he said her actions were having a negative impact on the trusts’ value. She was removed in 2021, according to court documents seen by The Post.
By removing Dick-Stock, the Stocks allege, the trustees breached their primary fiduciary duty to Dick-Stock.
“If your money is in Jersey and you complain about something, they will take your name off the asset and give it to the bad guy,” the source said.
“If they can do this to Tanya, they can do it to anyone. A trust beneficiary is not safe on the island of Jersey,” the source added.
Added Christensen: “What makes this case so important is that it is a very clear cut, complete abuse of power,” he added.
A spokesperson for Jersey’s Royal Court did not return requests for comment.
The banks declined to comment. Jersey’s External Relations Minister, Deputy Ian Gorst, told The Post in a statement that he is aware of the lawsuit “linked to a long-running private dispute over a Jersey trust,” but declined to comment further on the case.
English (US)