Watson is also on the losing side of a more than decade-long legal tussle with Sir Owen Glenn – during which Watson was imprisoned for contempt in 2020 over his hiding of assets – and his New Zealand companies have been liquidated by Inland Revenue over tens of millions of dollars in unpaid tax.

These recent years have been a sharp decline for Watson, who during the 1990s was assessed as New Zealand’s sixth-richest man and whose extravagant lifestyle and relationships made him common fodder for gossip pages.

But from his residence on the Spanish island of Mallorca, he told the Herald he believed his…