An heiress has filed a massive trust fund lawsuit against major global banks, accusing them of playing a central role in the decades-long embezzlement of her family’s wealth.
Tanya Dick-Stock and her husband, Darrin Stock, allege that Barclays, HSBC and related trust companies unlawfully facilitated her late father’s transfer of approximately $350 million from a trust that was supposed to benefit her, the New York Post reports.
The lawsuit seeks $12 billion in damages and could reshape how financial institutions are held accountable for trust mismanagement and offshore schemes.
Dick-Stock is the daughter of Canadian-born real estate magnate John Dick Sr. of Denver, a figure portrayed in the complaint not only as a fiduciary who breached his duties, but also as an architect of complex offshore transactions involving bogus loans, backdated documents and commingled accounts.
At the heart of Stocks’ case is the allegation that Barclays and HSBC improperly transferred control of her trust to La Hougue, a Jersey-based trust company controlled by her father, in violation of a trust provision that explicitly requires successor trustees to be U.S.-regulated banks or trust companies.
By appointing La Hougue, prosecutors allege, the institutions committed what British legal doctrine calls a “fraud against a power,” rendering the appointment invalid from the outset and leaving the banks legally responsible as trustees.
The Stocks say they have discovered more than 300 boxes of internal documents at the family’s former mansion in Jersey that reveal a pattern of misconduct. These materials allegedly include forged loan agreements, internal memos and bank records showing how Dick Sr. La Hougue used to hide assets and assist a cast of international clients involved in tax evasion and fraud.
Among those named in the documents are individuals with ties to high-profile offshore financial networks, including the siblings of convicted human trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell – a connection that has attracted the attention of US Senate investigators probing the financial entanglements surrounding the late Jeffrey Epstein.
The lawsuit alleges that the original trustees never legally resigned, meaning Barclays and its subsidiaries remain liable for the trust’s losses.
Barclays and HSBC have declined to comment publicly on the lawsuit, and the trust companies named in the complaint did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.
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