(JTA) — The son of a British Holocaust survivor accused his late father of hiding a fortune from the government during a court hearing on the son’s lawsuit for a bigger share of the inheritance.
Alan Hamilton made the allegations against his late father, David, during a hearing Tuesday in London’s High Court of Justice, the Daily Mail reported. The lawsuit aims to redivide the money between Hamilton, a New York-based accountant, and his sister that their father had in an offshore foundation.
David Hamilton, who was born David Zwingerman, died in 2007 at the age of 84, leaving his children $5.5 million in assets inside the United Kingdom and another $4.4 million from the Humanitarian Foundation Rainbow, a Liechtenstein-based fund that David Hamilton set up in 1990. He made his fortune through his real-estate business, Hamilton & Ray.
According to the Daily Mail, David Hamilton, who fled Nazi Germany in 1938, set up the nonprofit to ensure his family’s money would survive in case of a “repetition of the Holocaust.”
After his father’s death, Alan Hamilton received 31 percent of the money in the fund and his younger sister, Carolyn, inherited the rest. Hamilton is suing for an equal split, claiming he only found out about the unequal division four years after his father died.
The London court heard claims by Alan Hamilton that his father had moved the money to Liechtenstein to avoid paying taxes. Carolyn Hamilton denied the claim, saying her father was nervous about keeping all his money in one place.
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