IT tycoon flees government 'conspiracy'

A young IT tycoon whose personal fortune equalled that of Posh and Becks last year claims he is the victim of a government conspiracy and has fled to Sri Lanka with debts of £1m.

A young IT tycoon whose personal fortune equalled that of Posh and Becks last year claims he is the victim of a government conspiracy and has fled to Sri Lanka with debts of £1m.

Joe de Saram, 28, who features in the UK rich list, fled the country last week. His company, Rhodium Plc, was compulsorily wound up in the London High Courts this week, owing creditors almost £1m.

But de Saram claims he has more than enough money to pay them all back.

The Sheffield-based company produced encryption software, designed to prevent any level of penetration of private and company emails and files, which de Saram claims is "light years ahead of the competition".

Speaking exclusively to Computer Reseller News from his base in Sri Lanka, de Saram, who had a personal fortune of £28m, has since put his luxury Sheffield home up for sale, claiming his calls were being monitored by government agents and his every move was under surveillance, because of their "jealousy of his technology".

"I had actually changed the name of Rhodium to I Love My Encryption Technology Plc several weeks ago and it is that company which was wound up," he claimed.

The liquidation, de Saram claims, was allowed to happen as part of his "company's global restructuring".

It will not affect his future plans he said, because he had already set up another company called Rhodium Plc in the interim period, which is trading as normal.

The 'new' company under the same name, works with partners such as Microsoft and Intel. It is looking to expand its workforce to increase production of hard drives and motherboards.

Proceedings were brought against de Saram by petitioning creditor Info Techtronic, a hardware manufacturer, which is owed more than £200,000.

De Saram now says he is setting up a multi-billion pound company with former Sci-Fi guru Arthur C Clarke who lives in Sri Lanka. He claims he will be "more than able to meet his debts".

"Considering I have assets amounting to more than £1.5bn, I am hardly going to worry about a £1m debt and am not going to shirk from my responsibilities," he claimed.

First published in Computer Reseller News