A former boss of collapsed payday loan firm Wonga has ditched his wife for a Ukrainian refugee the couple housed.

Millionaire Haakon Overli, 52, began an affair with the woman after she arrived at the family home in Surrey following the Russian invasion.

Weeks earlier, he had lobbied Boris Johnson and home secretary Priti Patel to speed up the process of bringing the woman to Britain, according to The Sun.

Now, the entrepreneur has left his wife and moved in with his mistress, the paper reported.

He had repeatedly tweeted his support for bringing Ukrainian refugees to the UK at the beginning of the conflict in March.

Norwegian-born Mr Overli, who has an economics degree from Durham University, made his money in the dot-com boom after founding online stockbroker Self Trade in 1997, selling it for more than £900 million in 2000.

He also worked for JP Morgan and ING Barings, and served as a director at Wonga for a year in 2008.

It fell into administration in 2018 after being heavily criticised for ‘predatory lending’ to people who would never have been able to repay the loans.

Around 200,000 customers owed £400 million when Wonga went bust in a flood of compensation claims.

After his time at Wonga, Mr Overli co-founded software investor Dawn Capital, now worth more than £2 million.

Their situation was similar to that of security guard Tony Garnett, who left the mum of his two daughters for Ukrainian refugee Sofiia Karkadym, 22.

The couple set up home in Bradford in June – before sharing it with a second refugee and her Ukrainian boyfriend, MailOnline reported.

Jobless Mr Garnett, 29, had been with wife Lorna, 28, for 10 years.

After online abuse over the split, he said: ‘My relationship with Lorna had broken down for some years and we were living as brother and sister.

‘Since Sofiia arrived, I have managed to smile a lot and be happy again. I’m going to make her my wife.’

He has now become her full-time carer after she went partially blind.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

For more stories like this, check our news page.

Source: Read Full Article