Robert Maxwell

Robert Maxwell, born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch, was a Czech-born British media proprietor, politician, and fraudster. He built a vast publishing empire centered on Pergamon Press and Mirror Group Newspapers (Daily Mirror). Maxwell was a Labour Member of Parliament for Buckingham from 1964 to 1970. On November 5, 1991, his naked body was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean near the Canary Islands, having apparently fallen from his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine (named after his daughter). The official verdict was death by accidental drowning, but theories of suicide and murder have persisted. After his death, it was discovered he had fraudulently looted £440 million from his companies' pension funds to prop up the share price of his struggling businesses, leaving thousands of pensioners destitute. He was also alleged to have had connections to intelligence agencies including Mossad, MI6, and the KGB.

Born into a poor Orthodox Jewish family in Carpathian Ruthenia (then Czechoslovakia, now Ukraine). Most of his family was murdered in the Holocaust at Auschwitz. He escaped to France, joined the French Foreign Legion, and then the British Army during World War II, where he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery at the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he entered publishing and built his business empire from scratch.

Maxwell was one of the most colorful and controversial figures in British media. His yacht was named the Lady Ghislaine after his youngest daughter. After his death, investigators found he had secretly been meeting with intelligence officials from multiple countries. The pension fraud he perpetrated affected over 30,000 pensioners. His sons Kevin and Ian Maxwell were acquitted of fraud charges in 1996.

Married Elisabeth "Betty" Meynard in 1945. They had nine children: Michael (died 1968 from injuries sustained in a car accident), Philip, Anne, twins (died in infancy), Christine, Isabel, Kevin, Ian, and Ghislaine. Elisabeth survived Robert and published several books about him and their family.