A businessman ordered by a court to explain the disappearance of his alleged £400 million fortune after his wife filed for divorce may have faked a mental breakdown to escape jail, the High Court was told yesterday.

Scot Young had been ordered to provide full disclosure of his finances or be sent to prison for six months. That deadline expired on September 7 without Mr Young giving the information required.

Mrs Justice Parker agreed to give him one more chance to reveal the fate of his former millions after the High Court was told that recently he spent two weeks in an NHS hospital in West London under the Mental Health Act.

The judge said that Mr Young’s wife’s legal team thought he might have faked his breakdown. David Balcombe, QC, for Michelle Young, said: “If the symptoms which Mr Young may have manifested at the end of August were feigned he would not be the first to have adopted that ruse. “The husband ought to hear the clanging of the prison gates. The effect of prison can alter behaviour once it has been sampled.”

Source: Times Online