The brother of a ‘genius’ banker has accused the late financier’s Polish lover of being a ‘call girl’ who conned him out of a huge chunk of his £18million estate in a bitter escalation of the High Court battle over his vast fortune.
Nightclub boss Magdalena Zalinska, 44, is being sued over claims she obtained £4million from ex-Wellcome Trust chief Danny Truell by ‘undue influence’ before he died of a neurological condition aged 55 in 2019.
Miss Zalinska had been in a relationship with Mr Truell and in the seven years before he died received his interest in the flat in Clapham, south London, where she lived.
She also received more than £2million in cash while spending and withdrawing another £1.3million from his bank account, his brother Edi Truell claims.
But despite accepting Mr Truell was in a relationship with Miss Zalinska, lawyers for Edi Truell claim she was a ‘call girl’ whose influence over him meant he had handed over cash and property.
She had also used her Southwark nightclub business – which she had admitted to Danny Truell was struggling – as a ‘front’ to ‘extract’ huge sums of money that have since disappeared, it is claimed.
Miss Zalinska denies the allegations, insisting she and Mr Truell had a ‘romantic and loving relationship’ for 14 years.
Magdalena Zalinska has been accused of conning her lover, Danny Truell, out of a sizeable chunk of the City financier’s £18million fortune
Miss Zalinska had been in a relationship with Mr Truell and, in the seven years before he died, received interest in his flat in Clapham where she lived
Lifelong Labour Party member Danny Truell was a contemporary at Balliol College of future prime minister Boris Johnson and frequently faced him in debates.
He went on to become a hugely successful fund manager. After running Goldman Sachs’ asset management arm, he moved to Britain’s biggest charity the Wellcome Trust as its chief investment officer in 2005.
In 12 years, he grew assets under management from £12.3billion to £20.9billion. He also allowed it to double the amount it donated a year, to more than £1billion.
He and Naomi, his wife of 16 years, divorced in 2011, and a year later he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis which later became a form of motor neurone disease.
Danny Truell was a City genius who sparred with Boris Johnson in debates when they were students together at Oxford
Mr Justice Michael Green said Mr Truell had considerable personal wealth but lived ‘an apparently frugal lifestyle’, did not drive, have expensive hobbies or go on many holidays, and lived in ‘a modest and poorly furnished basement and ground floor maisonette’ near Clapham Junction, London. During his illness he was ‘dependent on alcohol’, the judge added.
In his will, he described Miss Zalinska, a Polish national and divorced mother of two who has also struggled with alcohol, as his ‘partner and dependent’.
Miss Zalinska claims to have met Mr Truell at the end of his previous marriage and started a relationship with him in 2004. It is accepted that she moved into the Clapham flat by 2016, the court heard.
However, Mr Truell’s 60-year-old brother Edi – also a City high-flyer – and former solicitor John Rayner Hatchard claim, as executors of his estate, that evidence casts doubt on the ‘quality’ of the relationship.
Their barrister Edward Hicks told the judge that Mr Truell had two ‘very separate’ lives – one with his family and the other with Miss Zalinska, with whom he had a ‘very strange relationship’.
He said a crucial question at the trial will be whether Mr Truell and Miss Zalinska were in a relationship akin to ‘husband and wife’ or whether it had been ‘marked by promiscuity’, which he did not know about.
‘Is this a lady who is presenting a false picture of her relationship to Danny?’ he said.
‘We have evidence that she was in relationships with other people.’
The Polish national had been in a relationship with Mr Truell and, in the seven years before he died, received his interest in the flat in Clapham where she lived, plus over £2million cash, while spending and withdrawing from his bank account another £1.3million, says his brother Edi Truell
Before his premature death, Mr Truell was living in a ‘modest and poorly furnished’ basement flat in Clapham, south London, despite having millions to his name
For Miss Zalinska, Amit Karia said the allegation was that she had been a ‘call girl’ – but pointed to a portion of Mr Truell’s will, in which she is described as his ‘dependent and partner’.
‘The documents which the deceased created at the time would suggest they were in a committed relationship,’ he said. ‘He called her a dependent partner in the will.’
The true nature of their relationship was also shown by the fact that Mr Truell left her cash and belongings worth more than £1million in the will, he added.
But Mr Hicks said many of the transactions between the pair before Mr Truell’s death needed to be explained.
He claims the transfers – which included £1.34million paid between 2013 and 2018 to a company, Magfos Ltd, through which she operated her London nightclub, Southwark Rooms – were tainted by the nature of the relationship.
Another £915,000 went to her directly in electronic transfers, £1.366million on spending and withdrawals using his debit card, while he also transferred to her his interest in the £750,000 flat she had previously rented from him in Clapham.
He said the executors are alleging ‘undue influence’ and, in relation to money given to her company, ‘misrepresentation’ against Miss Zalinska.
‘The sheer volume of money that goes out of the account to Magda is staggering,’ he told the judge. ‘It’s hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds and it accelerates as he becomes more ill. What was this money being used for? Working out what happened is not going to be easy.’
He added: ‘We say that she had had very large amounts of cash. We don’t know what they were used for.’
He said Miss Zalinska would also need to explain why money was given to her business and what it was used for – if it was used for the business at all.
‘Our case on Magfos is that this really was a front through which money was extracted from Danny,’ he said.
Mr Karia said Miss Zalinska had explained why the money had gone to her, claiming that Mr Truell had given it for the upkeep of the flat, to fund renovation projects in Poland and for investments.
But Mr Hicks said the Clapham flat was in a state of disrepair, while no further detail of the investments had been forthcoming. There was ‘nothing to show’ for any property deals in Poland, he added.
The full trial of the £4million claim against her is expected to go ahead next year. It could be followed by a claim by Miss Zalinska for further provision from Mr Truell’s estate, the court was told.
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