Bodyguard of Sultan of Brunei's ex-wife liable for £12m diamond fake The court heard that Lim sold one of Mrs Aziz's diamond bracelets in 2008, with the parties disagreeing on whether she had permission to do so. The following year, Lim persuaded her employer's adopted daughter, Afifa Abdullah, 26, to lend her the diamonds, claiming that she needed to show them to an investor to conclude a property deal, it was alleged. Instead, she took them to a jeweller and asked him to make replicas. She returned the jewels as promised but asked to borrow them again four months later and this time gave back the imitations, selling the originals in Geneva. Mrs Aziz said she noticed something was wrong only when she sent one of the rings to be resized and was told it was a fake. The disclosure left her "panicking and really worried," the court heard. When Miss Abdullah realised what might have happened, she sent Lim a text telling her that the diamonds were being checked. The bodyguard responded saying: "Please don't tell mama or I'll go to jail," it was claimed. Giving evidence, Mrs Aziz admitted that she enjoyed gambling and that the sums involved may seem "obscene" to many people. She said she usually got chips worth £50,000 and bet around £10,000 a spin. Any sums she owed were repaid "promptly." Miss Abdullah admitted she had been "naive" in lending the jewels to Lim but said that at the time she had trusted her. "She was like my best friend," she told the court. The court heard that Lim told the jeweller that her mother had been given the diamonds by Mrs Aziz as a retirement present but Mrs Aziz said she had never employed the woman. Mr Justice Lindblom said that if Mrs Aziz had wanted to sell her diamonds, he could see no reason why she would not have done so in the normal way, rather than "secretly" through Lim. "There is no obvious reason for the claimant to have engaged in the charade of having the diamonds copied and replacing them in the rings with replicas," he said. The judge ruled against Lim on the claims over the bracelet and the diamonds, dismissing her version of events. He ordered her to pay Mrs Aziz the full value of the bracelet but stayed proceedings on the diamonds pending the outcome of ongoing legal action in Switzerland, where Mrs Aziz is attempting to recover the jewels from the company that purchased them from Lim. Lim, who is based in Singapore, did not attend the trial and was not represented by lawyers. She has been made the subject of a worldwide order freezing her assets.