The super-rich are not immune to breaking the law, either to boost their wealth or to protect it. We take a look at 15 of the most notorious incarcerated tycoons.

In 2002 billionaire A. Alfred Taubman – the ex-chairman and principal owner of Sotheby's auction house – received a year and a day sentence and a $7.5 million (£5.8m) fine. Why? For the part he played in a price-fixing scheme that cheated auction buyers out of over $100 million (£77m). Despite being found guilty of these crimes, however, Taubman always claimed he was innocent.

Even letters written by former President Gerald R. Ford and former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to the Judge presiding over the case didn't help to keep Taubman out of prison. That said, he only spent 10 months incarcerated, and even on his release continued to insist that he was innocent. He passed away in 2015.

One of Israel's most powerful financiers, Nochi Dankner was involved in a number of disastrous investments in Las Vegas and elsewhere during the early 2010s, which caused public bank IDB to lose millions of dollars, knocking a considerable amount of money off its value.

In 2012, Dankner, who was the controlling shareholder of the bank, hired a team of brokers to buy and sell IDB stock, artificially inflating the value of the bank just before its IPO. The authorities soon caught wind of the securities fraud and Dankner was sentenced last December to two years in prison for the crime. He appealed in August this year, but Israel's Supreme Court rejected it and increased his sentence to three years.

In January 2017, Samsung's de facto boss Jay Y. Lee was charged with bribery, embezzlement and perjury by the South Korean prosecutor's office and arrested for the crimes in February, sending shockwaves through the South Korean establishment.

The 'Crown Prince of Samsung' was accused of bribing disgraced former president Park Geun-hye and her close friend Choi Soon-sil to the tune of $40 million (£30.1m) in exchange for preferential treatment. In August 2017, Lee was sentenced to five years in prison, but in February this year, just six months after initial sentencing, Seoul High Court suspended his sentence and he walked free.

In 2012, Hong Kong property tycoon Thomas Kwok who, along with his brother Raymond, was worth in the region of $17.2 billion (£13.2bn), was accused of bribing Rafael Hui, Hong Kong's former Chief Secretary for Administration, over a period of several years during the 2000s.

While his brother Raymond was cleared of any wrongdoing, Thomas Kwok fell foul of the powers that be and was convicted in December 2014 of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office. The property magnate was sentenced to five years imprisonment and fined $64,000 (£49.2k). His final appeal against the charges was rejected in June 2017.

China's answer to Carl Icahn, the once-revered hedge fund manager Xu Xiang amassed a fortune of $2.2 billion (£1.7bn) after founding ridiculously successful investment firm Zexi Investment in 2009. But rumours soon spread that Xu was up to no good and he was arrested in November 2015 for insider trading.

The Chinese authorities went as far as to seal off the Hangzhou Bay Bridge to arrest Xu. The corrupt hedge fund supremo was convicted in January 2017 of insider trading and manipulating the securities market. He was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in jail and fined an eye-watering $1.6 billion (£1.2bn).

Financier Michael Milken is the embodiment of a comeback king. In the 90s he went to jail for developing a market for high-yield "junk" bonds. He was fined $600 million (£461.7m) and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Milken only served two years of his sentence and was released in 1993. The same month Milken was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which led the billionaire to set up the Prostate Cancer Foundation for research into the disease. He has also founded other foundations including the Milken Institute, a non-profit economic think tank, which has conferences with guests such as Joe Biden, pictured with Milken.

On 27 September 2016, Canadian property heir Marco Muzzo was drunk behind the wheel when his speeding SUV careered into a vehicle in Ontario carrying Gary Neville and his three young grandchildren: Daniel Neville-Lake, nine; his brother Harrison, five; and their two-year-old sister Milly, who all died in the crash.

Muzzo, who was returning from his bachelor party in Miami, had two to three times the legal limit of alcohol in his system. The billionaire playboy, who is filled with “great remorse, sympathy and unimaginable regret” for the DUI crash, was sentenced in March to a 10-year prison term for the devastating crime.

Sri Lankan-American financier Rai Rajaratnam founded the New York-based Galleon Group, one of the world's leading hedge fund management firms, back in 1997, and had accumulated a fortune of $1.8 billion (£1.4bn) by October 2009, when the FBI came knocking on his door.

Rajaratnam was arrested for insider trading and prosecuted for the crime. The billionaire investor was eventually found guilty of 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud, and was sentenced to 11 years in prison on 13 October 2011, and fined $150 million (£115.4m).

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The one-time richest man in China, billionaire Huang Guangyu was the chairman of GOME Group, China's largest consumer electronics retailer until one fateful day in 2008 when he was arrested and charged with stock market manipulation, illegal foreign exchange dealing and bribery.

In 2010, Huang was sentenced to a hefty 14 years in jail for the crimes, but his stint in prison hasn't stopped him from gaining control over the electronics retailing giant and running the firm from his cell.

A slew of Brazilian billionaires have been prosecuted for their involvement in endemic corruption at the state-owned oil company Petrobras as part of a nationwide probe into corruption called Operation Carwash, but Marcelo Odebrecht, the former CEO of Odebrecht, has received the longest prison sentence.

The moneyed heir to his eponymous family business was arrested in June 2015 and convicted in March 2016 for paying government officials more than $30 million (£23.1m) in kickbacks. Although Odebrecht was handed a 19-year sentence for his crimes, it was reduced to 10 years in December 2016, and he is allowed to serve the rest of his jail term at his luxury home.

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During the late 1990s and early 2000s, American-born hedge fund manager Samuel Israel III ran a complicated Ponzi scheme, even going as far as to create a fake accounting firm in an attempt to cover up his dodgy dealings. The US authorities discovered the dubious scheme in 2005 and Israel was indicted.

Israel went on the run not long after and even attempted to fake his own death in order to elude the cops. The crooked billionaire was sentenced in absentia to 20 years in jail, and eventually surrendered to the FBI in July 2008. Israel was sentenced to an additional two years for absconding. 

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Canadian-born billionaire Bernard Ebbers was behind one of the largest accounting scams in US history. As CEO of WorldCom, Ebbers oversaw false financial reporting and defrauded investors on an epic scale between January 2001 and March 2002.

Ebbers was indicted on 15 counts of false financial reporting in August 2003 and eventually convicted of nine felonies in March 2005. Four months later, he was sentenced to 25 years in a low-security jail for masterminding the scam.

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Brazilian oil and gas billionaire Eike Batista used to be the country's richest man. Not any more. After being found guilty of bribing and threatening government members, Batista received a 30-year sentence in July this year.

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Batista got caught out by the Operation Carwash investigation. In July 2018, Batista was convicted of paying $16.6 million (£12.8m) to the former governor of Rio de Janeiro for certain contracts.

As chairman of the Stanford Financial Group, Texan executive Allen Stanford was indicted by US federal authorities in February 2009 for setting up a massive Ponzi scheme, which relieved investors of billions of dollars in certificates of deposits

Stanford turned himself in on 18 June 2009, and was convicted of the fraud in March 2012. The disreputable boss was sentenced to a colossal 110 years in jail, and is currently serving time at the high-security United States Penitentiary, Coleman in Florida.

The brains behind the largest and most audacious financial fraud in US history, Bernard Madoff duped 4,800 clients out of $64.8 billion (£49.9bn). The notorious scammer was investigated by federal authorities on several occasions during the 2000s and finally indicted for the fraud in December 2008.

Madoff confessed to transforming his wealth management business into a massive Ponzi scheme during the 1990s and pleaded guilty in March 2009 to 11 financial felonies. The infamous fraudster was eventually sentenced to a staggering 150 years in prison for the scheme, the maximum possible sentence allowed.

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