Mumbai attack claims charter magnate

by Jeni Bone on 28 Nov 2008 A British millionaire, 73-year old Andreas Liveras, has been gunned down in his hotel room in Mumbai just minutes after the he spoke to the BBC via telephone about the ordeal at the Taj hotel.

He is one of more than 125 people, including dozens of Britons and two Australians who have been killed, injured or taken hostage by Islamic extremists during the series of co-ordinated raids on western targets.

Liveras, who emigrated from Cyprus to London in 1963 and went on to amass a £315 million fortune from his luxury yacht charter business, telephoned the BBC from a locked room in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel as terrorists fired AK47 automatic rifles and set off grenades outside. He had just told the BBC he had just sat down for dinner at the Taj when the shooting began.

'We heard the machine gunfire outside in the corridor,' he told the BBC.
'We hid ourselves under the table and then they switched all the lights off. But the machine guns kept going, and they took us into the kitchen, and from there into a basement, before we came up into a salon.

'There must be more than a thousand people here. Nobody comes in this room and nobody goes out, and we really don't know. Everybody is just living on their nerves.'

Hours later, at 9.30pm local time, Mr Liveras was pronounced dead by doctors at St George’s hospital. The circumstances of his death remain unclear, but a hospital spokesman said that he had been shot 'multiple times'.

The self-made millionaire, who ran a chartered yacht company based in Monaco and was in Bombay for a trade show, had described earlier to the BBC how he and other guests were locked in the basement of the hotel for their own protection.

He might have escaped death if he had been carrying his Cypriot passport, family members said. The terrorists had separated British and American passport holders.

In his online biography, Mr Liveras described his life as a 'classic rags-to-riches tale'. When he arrived in London he worked for a small bakery as a delivery man but later bought the business, transforming it into one of largest independent manufacturers of frozen gateaux in Europe. It was later sold for millions, allowing him to move into the yachting business.

More at www.liverasyachts.com