The daughter of a Portuguese banker who died in Dubai has heard that she cannot inherit his €560,000 estate because she is not a Muslim.
This is just the latest drama in the life of 14-year-old Paris Shahravesh, whose father Pedro Correia dos Santos died last March after remarrying a Tunisian woman.
Two months ago, Paris and her mother Laleh were in the news, as Laleh was held for four weeks in Dubai after calling her former husband’s second wife a “horse” over Facebook (click here).
The UK’s Daily Mail has dubbed this week’s development as ‘the latest episode in a vicious spat’ between the two women. But it serves as a warning to anyone whose loved-ones die in the United Arab Emirates.
Says the Mail: “According to the form of Sharia applied in Dubai, non-Muslims are unable to inherit the estate of a Muslim”.
Pedro Correio dos Santos was a Muslim (we are not told when he converted).
Certainly Paris’ Iranian-British mother is a Muslim and, she says this makes Paris a ‘British Muslim’.
Says Laleh Shahravesh – who was eventually released to return to UK – the judge made his decision to cut Paris out of her inheritance based on “the wrong information.
Mrs Shahravesh has now begun legal proceedings to overturn the court ruling and claim what she believes rightfully belongs to her daughter, says the Mail.
Radha Sterling, CEO of “Detained in Dubai” which has been advising Laleh Shahravesh from the start of her problems in Dubai says her organisation has “seen similar cases before in both the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where there is an attempt to exclude children of Westerners from their rightful inheritance when those Westerners have married a woman from the region and subsequently died”.
