My friend Krishna Maharaj, who has died aged 85 in a prison hospital in Florida, was a British victim of an American miscarriage of justice.
Kris enjoyed life as a wealthy London-based businessman until 1986, when he was framed for the murder of a Jamaican man, Derrick Moo Young, who had been managing property investments for him in Florida.
Unknown to Kris, Moo Young was involved with the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, and had embezzled $443,000 from Kris to cover money he had lost in a failed money laundering operation. When Escobar’s hitman, Guillermo “Cuchilla” Zuluaga, organised the murder of Moo Young and his son, Duane, in a Miami hotel, a corrupt police officer, Pete Romero, helped to put Kris in the frame as the killer.
Kris was ineptly represented at trial by a lawyer who failed to call six alibi witnesses or even ask for a mistrial when the original trial judge was arrested for taking bribes. He fainted from shock when he was sentenced to death in 1987.
For the next 37 years, with my help as his new legal representative from 1993 onwards, Kris battled against what he referred to (accurately in my view) as “corruption of unspeakable magnitude”. The death penalty was thrown out in 2002, but despite half a dozen narcotics traffickers admitting they were involved in the crime, the US courts refused to order his release on the grounds that he could not show his trial had been unfair.
As Kris’s health faded over the years, he was eventually confined to a three-foot wide bed, looking forward only to the five-minute telephone call he had each day with his Portuguese-born wife, Marita (nee Sabino), who had stood by him since their marriage in 1976. Marita went back to England earlier this year, hoping Kris would soon be released and able to join her. But they were only reunited in the UK after his death.
Kris was born in San Fernando in Trinidad to Nanan, a businessman, and his wife, Dolly, a homemaker. After leaving San Fernando school he had a short marriage that ended when he was 18, and began work as a car salesman before moving to the UK at 20 in 1960. Settling in London, he managed to obtain a £100 bank loan to set up a business, Chrisco, importing tropical fruit and vegetables.
The idea made him a rich man, and, among other things, he used his fortune to become a prominent racehorse owner in the UK, with his apogee coming when King Levanstell won the Queen Alexandra Stakes at Royal Ascot in 1974.
After a second marriage ended in divorce, he married Marita, a banker, having met her at a party. They enjoyed a decade of real happiness in the UK before the calamity of his conviction.
Kris had always been trusting to a fault, and it was this feature of his personality that led to tragedy. He placed his faith in Moo Young to manage property investments in Florida, with a view to spending time there with Marita during the British winter. But Moo Young’s criminal activities entangled Kris in a terrible web from which he could not escape.
He is survived by Marita and by five children: Indira and Indrani from his first marriage, Christina and Christopher from his second, and Tania from another relationship before he met Marita.
