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 Coat of arms of Sir Mark Thatcher The Honourable Sir Mark Thatcher, 2nd Baronet (born August 15, 1953), is the son of Sir Denis Thatcher and Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister. In 1987, Mark Thatcher married Diane Burgdorf, a daughter of a millionaire car dealer. The family moved to South Africa possibly to avoid bad publicity because of allegations of racketeering in a £4 million civil action in 1994. Motor rallying careerIn 1982, while competing in the Paris-Dakar rally, Mark Thatcher, his French co-driver Charlotte Verney and their mechanic went missing in the Sahara Desert for six days. On January 9, the trio became separated from a convoy of vehicles after they stopped to make repairs to a faulty steering arm. They were declared missing on January 12; after a large-scale search, a C-130 Hercules search plane from the Algerian military spotted the white Peugeot 504 some 50km off course. Thatcher, Verney and the mechanic were all unharmed. He was criticised at the time for not thanking his rescuers. He financed his rallying under a company called Mark Thatcher Racing, but it dissolved because of financial problems. Business lifeHis business dealings at the time that his mother was Prime Minister have been the subject of much press attention. Thatcher is alleged by Saudi dissident Mohammed Khilewi and British Member of Parliament Sir Tam Dalyell to have received a multimillion-pound commission on the £20 billion Al Yamamah arms contract with Saudi Arabia, which his mother signed in 1985 as Prime Minister. However, according to The Guardian, "Sir Mark has always denied receiving this payment or exploiting his mother's connections in business dealings." On August 25, 2004, Thatcher was arrested at his home in Cape Town, South Africa, and was charged later that day with contravening two sections of South Africa's Foreign Military Assistance Act, which bans South African residents from taking part in any foreign military activity. The charges related to "possible funding and logistical assistance in relation to [an] attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea" organised by Simon Mann. He was released on bail of 2 million Rand, but remains under house arrest. On November 24, the Cape High Court upheld a supoena from the South African Justice Ministry that requires him to answer under oath questions from Equatorial Guinean authorities regarding the alleged coup attempt. He was due to face questioning on November 25 regarding offences under the South African Foreign Military Assistance Act; however, these proceedings were later postponed until 8 April 2005. Ultimately, following a process of plea bargaining, Thatcher pleaded guilty to negligence in investing in an aircraft "without taking proper investigations into what it would be used for". On January 13 he was fined three million rand and received a four-year suspended jail sentence. Sir Mark Thatcher has a twin sister, Carol. He inherited his baronetcy after the death of his father in 2003. External links
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