Tomb Raider Founder Does A Houdini As Company's Finances Fall

Charles Cornwall, the founder of the famous Tomb Raider computer games based on the block buster Lara Croft movies, is now playing hide-and-seek with creditors after his dream went sour even as he is being hunted by the directorate of special operations from South Africa to be questioned regarding fraud and murder of one of his directors Brent Kebble.

Sci Entertainment was a small player in the computer gaming industry, which was better known for one of its road game, Carmageddon. In 2005, it took over a rival company Eidos, which owned the famous Lara Croft based computer game, Tomb Raider. Charles Cornwall had discovered the golden lair and even before that he had become a millionaire and moved on to South Africa to pursue a lavish lifestyle of polo and flying helicopters. He bought a lavish home in Plettenberg Bay, which essentially was South Africa's equivalent to Beverly Hills, and followed up on his passion for playing polo at the exclusive Kurland Park polo ground. His polo team also consisted of some of the best polo players including ex-captain of the South African Polo Team, Buster Mackenzie. His business circle also consisted of Tokyo Sexwale, a wealthy millionaire, who at one time had been imprisoned along with Nelson Mandela and a controversial tycoon Brent Kebble, who had made his fortune in gold mining.

Mr. Cornwall had made a lot of money due to the success of The Tomb Raiders and in the last 2 years, he received almost 3 million pounds from Eidos. But Sci Entertainment, the parent company, has admitted that the company was in deep financial trouble and was now looking at various ways to reduce its expenses, including laying off around a third of its staff, which would bring down the total to around 800. Sci Entertainment also needed around 45 to 55 million pounds in order to survive, which was much more than the 30 million pounds, which it had assumed would be enough in January 2008. This is in spite of the fact that one of their games 'Kane and Lynch', which became quite successful and sold around 1.4 million copies during the previous Christmas. Sci Entertainment had already bid goodbye to its chief executive Jane Cavanagh and 2 other top executives during January and had appointed Phil Rogers as its new chief executive. But there were personal problems following Charles Cornwall, after news came out in 2005 that shares, which were held in JCI, which was a company owned by Mr. Kebble and where Mr. Cornwall was a director, were either sold off or pledged against security for loans. This infuriated other shareholders and an investigation was ordered to find out as to who was the real owner of the company. But to add to the mystery, Mr. Kebble was found dead in his Mercedes car with 7 bullet wounds. With Sci Entertainment now posting an interim loss of 83.4 million pounds, the company has given signs that it was ready to consider “any sensible offer for the company”. To make matters worse, Mr. Cornwall has vanished from South Africa to avoid creditors who say that he owes them 10 million pounds. His ex-wife Patty, too is inquiring about his financial status and his assets. It is rumored that he is back in the UK but he has not yet surfaced to state his side of the story.

It seems like Mr. Cornwell's personal life too is heading in the same direction as some of his games, the only difference is that one can always re-start the game. Whether Mr. Cornwall will be able to re-start his personal life and save his company will now have to be seen but that too will only be possible if he manages to free himself of all the financial and legal hurdles in his path.

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Article written by: Craig Parker - Make Money Expert