Open Door To " Poisoned Dart " Marriage £50 million pay-out ``would not dent'' fortune
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By Andrew Woodcock, PA News
Katina Dart's multi-million pound alimony suit lifted the lid on the
bizarre lifestyle of one of America's richest and most secretive families.
Courts in Britain and America heard how the Darts lived out an existence
of bitter arguments and mutual distrust amid conditions of fabulous
luxury, surrounded by dozens of bodyguards.
Robert Dart portrayed his wife as a spendaholic who denied him sex and
whose only occupation was shopping, while Katina described her husband as
a man obsessed with money, who spent years plotting how to divorce her
with the least expense.
The Darts' fortune is built on the back of the humble styrofoam coffee cup
and burger box, which Robert's family company, Dart Container Corp,
supplies to McDonald's and other fast-food retailers.
Until recently, despite the family's vast wealth - estimated recently at
around £2.7 billion, putting them in America's top 130 wealthiest people -
their lives were shrouded in almost complete secrecy.
No photographs of 67-year-old patriarch William Dart have ever been made
public, and sightings of brothers Robert, Thomas and Kenneth were few and
far between. Fortune magazine nicknamed them The Silent Family.
The family business extends its tentacles around the globe - they hold 4%
of the Brazilian national debt, worth 1.4 billion, and are understood to
have interests in eastern Europe, China and Guernsey.
The Brazilian holding was bought for just 375 million in 1992 by Kenneth,
the canny investor who effectively heads the family business and is
credited with more than doubling the Darts' fortune in the past few years.
Both Robert, who lives in London, and Kenneth, who has set up home in the
Cayman Islands, hold dual Irish and Belize passports, claiming that the
threat of kidnap and murder have forced them out of the US.
But brother Tom, who broke with the family several years ago, claiming
they lived in a world of ``insanity and treachery'', insisted they were
motivated by an obsessive desire to evade US taxes.
At one point, Kenneth allegedly contemplated taking up personal residence
on his 200ft yacht in international waters, in order to qualify as
stateless for tax purposes.
And in 1991, he told Tom that he was financing scientific research to find
a way to keep his brain alive after his death, so his children could avoid
death duties.
Despite his massive wealth, his fleet of planes and helicopters, his 7
million (£4.4 million) yacht and his 5 million (£3.1 million) resort on
the Caymans, Kenneth is understood to be miserly in small things, refusing
to wear any watch more expensive than a Timex.
Katina insisted in court that her 6ft 8in husband's move to England was
inspired largely by the desire to avoid the notoriously punitive divorce
settlements handed out to millionaires in the US.
She recalled how her husband told her in 1993 that he was running out of
money and that they would have to leave America in order to carry on
living in the style to which they had become accustomed.
But she insists the move was part of a plot to allow him to take advantage
of Britain's divorce courts, which tend to award millionaire's wives
enough money to maintain their lifestyle, rather than half their husbands'
fortunes, as is common in the US.
She described how she learnt he wanted a divorce after the doorbell rang
at their £5 million home in Kensington, west London, one Saturday morning
as they ate breakfast.
She said: ``I thought it was strange that he went to answer the door
himself rather than let the security man go. Then a man came in and handed
me divorce papers and Bob said to me, `Now you can't hire an American
attorney or go to an American court'.''
The couple had started dating at the age of 15 while still at high school
in Okemos, Michigan. They were already both fabulously wealthy and
thoroughly unpopular, winning the nickname ``the poisoned Darts''.
They lived a life of incredible luxury after their 1980 wedding and had
two children, William, now 13, and 10-year-old Ariana.
Katina alone had two Porsches, a Ferrari, more than a dozen bodyguards and
unlimited spending money for parties and shopping.
She would cross the Atlantic by private jet for dental appointments in the
US.
The couple were so wealthy that Appeal Court judge Lady Justice
Butler-Sloss commented that even a £50 million pay-out ``would not dent''
Mr Dart's fortune.
Robert Dart's barrister Barry Singleton QC, told the court: ``They lived
the most affluent lifestyle in their neighbourhood. Nobody could aspire,
even remotely, to the kind of living they had.''
But, according to Katina's court testimony, the couple argued bitterly
throughout their marriage, with Mrs Dart frequently fleeing home to their
30-acre estate in Michigan. PA News