‘Dad was chatty and calm when he rang me 8 minutes before he died...I believe Russians killed him’

DAUGHTER OF HORROR PLUNGE

THE daughter of tycoon Scot Young claims he was murdered by the Russian mafia.

Sasha Young said she refused to believe her father’s horror plunge from his fourth-storey luxury home on to railings was suicide.

And she told how her dad, who she said had a crippling fear of heights, rang her eight minutes before his death and sounded fine.

She also spoke of his business dealings with Russians, who would turn up at their Marylebone home with “wads” of cash.

Sasha, 23, is calling for enquiries into Scot’s death in December 2014 to be reopened.

She said: “Dad called me eight minutes before it happened. There was absolutely nothing in his voice that indicated anything was wrong.

“Dad said, ‘How are you doing?’, and I said everything was fine. I asked how he was and he said it was all good.

“He said he’d call me the next day and that he loved me. I told him I loved him, too. He didn’t sound stressed or agitated.

“After he died we begged the police to investigate, but the forensic work that should have been carried out at the flat at the time wasn’t done.”

Sasha said she hoped that someone who knew the “truth” about her father’s death at the age of 52 would come forward.

Scot, who made around £400million in the 1980s property boom, claimed to have lost all his money after his divorce from wife Michelle.

But Sasha believes it is hidden somewhere, or has been stolen by Russians whom he had business dealings with.

He was ordered to pay Michelle £28m

‘We promised each other we would never think of taking our own lives’

when they split, and in 2013 was jailed for six months for contempt of court after failing to give her a penny.

Months after his release from jail he was dead.

Sasha told why she believed he had been murdered.

She said: “One day, when I was sitting my GCSEs, everything in my life seemed scary, unstable and horrible.

“I was embarrassed and ashamed my parents’ divorce was so public.

“At school, a teacher said, ‘You know you’ll probably end up in a council flat’. I felt desperate, suicidal, and I remember sitting at home crying and telling Dad I’d considered taking my life.

“He said, ‘Never think about doing that, ever again’. He told me it made him scared. He was crying.

“That day we made a pact. We promised each other we would never, ever contemplate taking our own lives.

“And he had a terrible fear of heights. He didn’t even like looking out of a high window.

“He would never have ended his life that way. Nobody wants to die like that, from impalement.

“The police said it was one of the worst deaths they’d seen.”

At Scot’s inquest the coroner recorded an open verdict. But Sasha believes he was killed by a professional hitman on the orders of the Russian mafia.

She said: “I was about 13 and I remember a Russian guy – one of Dad’s business associates – handing over about £30,000 in cash outside a hairdressers’ in Mayfair.

“We began to realise Dad was associated with people who were scary.

“It came to a head one night when I was about 14. Mum was at the cinema and my sister and I were in the house alone.

“Dad called us and said people were watching the house, that we were in danger and we had to meet him and leave the country that night. I’m sure he believed it. He wouldn’t have frightened us without reason. We locked ourselves in a bathroom. We were terrified – too scared to leave the house.”

Scot had close links to Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian oligarch who was a vocal opponent of President Vladimir Putin.

Four of Scot’s friends – Paul Castle, Robbie Curtis, Johnny Elichaoff and Berezovsky, who all made fortunes on deals they brokered – met violent deaths within four years of each other.

Berezovsky was an investor in Project Moscow, a Russian property deal set up by Scot, which collapsed, allegedly costing those involved hundreds of millions.

Sasha told the Daily Mail: “There are too many unanswered questions, too many things I’ll never understand. But what I want to know is the truth about why he died. I want justice for him.”

Sasha’s childhood was one of enormous wealth. Her family lived in a villa stuffed with £6m worth of antiques, set in 500 acres in Oxfordshire.

She and her elder sister Scarlet had 15 ponies, six pedigree dogs and a collection of Fendi handbags worth