A long-running probate wrangle was upended after the ‘dead’ woman – Nigerian-born June Ashimola – gave evidence in the High Court in London and told a judge that she was alive
After June Ashimola was declared dead in 2019, apparently without having left a will, power of attorney over her £350,000 estate was granted to Ruth Samuel on behalf of a man named Bakare Lasisi, who had apparently married Ms Ashimola in 1993.
However, doubts were raised about the details of Ms Ashimola’s death certificate when she was apparently sighted alive and well in her native Nigeria. Samuel and Lasisi dismissed these sightings, alleging that the woman in question was a complete stranger that was “masquerading” as Ms Ashimola.
Their claims were called into question, though, when evidence that Ms Ashimola was very much alive was given in the High Court – by the “dead” woman herself.
High Court judge John Linwood dryly noted that the case was “an unusual probate claim in that the deceased says she is very much alive”.
He added that Ms Ashimola’s death certificate could not be confirmed as genuine “to the necessary standard in that only a copy was produced. The provenance was unknown. There was no evidence before me that it was a genuine document evidencing a real event.”
There were also questions about the star witness, The Times reports. Ms Ashimola, 55, had been unable to attend the court in person, due to visa restrictions. which meant that some aspects of her evidence were “unsatisfactory”.
However the judge said on balance it seemed probable that the woman was who she said she was — she showed her recently-expired Nigerian passport as part of her video evidence.
An investigation linked the fraudulent probate claim to one Tony Ashikodi, who was jailed for three years in 1996 for obtaining property by deception. The judge said it was clear that Ashikodi had “orchestrated” the fake claim.
In his ruling, the judge added that Ms Ashimola had never been married to Lasisi and that the marriage certificate was “a concocted or fraudulent document”. It was unclear whether Lasisi even existed, he added, saying that even if Lasisi was a real person, he was not likely to be aware that his identity was being used.
At the conclusion of the case, the court heard that the wrangle had generated “disproportionate” legal costs of well over £150,000, which could exceed the value of the “dead” woman’s remaining estate.