Robert Maxwell

Ian Robert Maxwell (10 June 1923 – 5 November 1991) was a Czechoslovak-born British-French media proprietor and politician. He was the father of Ghislaine Maxwell.

Of Jewish descent, he escaped the Nazi occupation of his native Czechoslovakia and joined the Czechoslovak Army in exile during World War II. He was decorated after active service in the British Army. In subsequent years he worked in publishing, building up Pergamon Press to a major academic publisher. After six years as a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) during the 1960s, Maxwell again put all his energy into business, successively buying the British Printing Corporation, Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) and Macmillan Inc., among other publishing companies.

Maxwell led a flamboyant life, living in Headington Hill Hall in Oxford, from which he often flew in his helicopter, or sailed on his luxury yacht, Lady Ghislaine, named after his daughter. Robert Maxwell was litigious and often embroiled in controversy. In 1989, he had to sell successful businesses, including Pergamon Press, to cover some of his debts. In 1991, his body was discovered floating in the Atlantic Ocean, having apparently fallen overboard from his yacht. He was buried on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives, in a high-profile funeral attended by members of the Israeli political establishment, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, President Chaim Herzog, and dignitaries like Natan Sharansky.

Maxwell's death triggered the collapse of his publishing empire as banks called in loans. His sons briefly attempted to keep the business together, but failed as the news emerged that the elder Maxwell had embezzled hundreds of millions of pounds from his own companies' pension funds. The Maxwell companies applied for bankruptcy protection in 1992. After Maxwell's death, large discrepancies in his companies' finances were revealed, including his fraudulent misappropriation of the Mirror Group pension fund.