Mark Thatcher refused US visa
Mark Thatcher has been refused a visa to be reunited with his family in the United States, his spokesman confirmed today.
The son of the former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher had hoped to make a new start in the US after he was given a four-year suspended sentence and fined over the botched coup in Equatorial Guinea.
But he still plans to leave Britain despite being unable to visit his Texan-born wife Diane, 44, and their two children in Dallas.
He said in a statement: “It is quite true that my visa application has been rejected.
“It was always a calculated risk when I plea bargained in South Africa.
“As a result of this decision, I shall make the family home in Europe, not the UK, and my family will be joining me as soon as arrangements are made.
“But the children will continue to be educated in America.”
A spokesman for Sir Mark said today that the visa application to live in the US had been rejected but he could re-apply after two years.
He told the Press Association: “He has been advised against travelling as a tourist and seeking a waiver on the plane in the circumstances and he can re-apply in two years’ time.”
In January, Sir Mark, 51, was fined £265,000 by a South African court but escaped jail in a plea bargain deal in which he admitted “unwittingly” helping bank roll an attempted takeover in Equatorial Guinea.
Sir Mark, who had lived in South Africa since 1995, has been staying in London with his 79-year-old mother upon his return to Britain.
He had spoken of his plan to be reunited “imminently” with his American wife and children Michael, 15, and Amanda, 11, in Dallas, Texas.
Guinean President Teodoro Obiang’s 25 year regime had accused Sir Mark and others, most of them British, of funding a plot to install an opposition leader as a puppet and thus control Africa’s third biggest oil producer.
In February, Sir Mark insisted he had nothing to do with the failed plot when quizzed about it in a South African court.
He was in court to reply to 43 questions submitted last September by Equatorial Guinean prosecutors and read out by a Cape Town magistrate.
