The son of the former British prime minister, Baroness Thatcher, pleaded guilty today to unwittingly financing an alleged coup plot in Equatorial Guinea.
Sir Mark Thatcher, 51, was fined three million rand (€380,000) at a court in Cape Town in South Africa and given a four-year suspended sentence.
If he had been unable to pay the fine, he would have faced five years' imprisonment in addition to the suspended term.
Sir Mark was arrested on 25 August last year at his Cape Town villa on charges of contributing $275,000 to help finance the suspected plot to overthrow the Equatorial Guinea leader, Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
