The son of a wealthy New Zealand investment banker and his new wife who have travelled the world highlighting environmental issues are believed to have been seized in Iran.
Topher Richwhite, 34 – son of wealthy banker David Richwhite – and his wife Bridget Thackwray, 27, reportedly entered Iran from Turkey in July.
The couple are travelling the world to promote environmental issues and the organisations working to solve them, as part of their Expedition Earth brand.
They have reportedly not been heard from since crossing the border in their Jeep.
Their Instagram accounts have also not been active since late June, with some of their thousands of worried fans asking what has happened to them.
Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British researcher who was imprisoned in Iran for more than two years over false espionage claims said on Twitter that the couple are missing and thought to have been arrested in Iran.
The academic – an expert on Islamic studies – tweeted at 12:50am today (Tuesday, 25th October): “I can confirm that the two New Zealand travel bloggers, Topher Richwhite and his wife Bridget Thackwray of ‘Expedition Earth,’ are missing, believed arrested in Iran.”
Her tweet included another tweet from a user called ‘HafezeSayeha’, who shared a still image from what appears to be an Instagram Story post of the couple entering Iran, and who said (in Farsi): “Now it is relatively irrelevant, but sometimes I remember these servants of God.
“Two New Zealand citizens entered Iran on the way to travel the world, their last story in the highlight is this, and it is not known what happened for three months. Strangely, there is no word from the New Zealand government or their relatives there.”
Moore-Gilbert then also tweeted: “The NZ media is aware of their disappearance and the NZ Foreign Ministry is applying pressure to both the media and their families not to go public with their plight.”
And she also said: “Topher and Bridget crossed into Iran from Turkey in July and haven’t been heard from since. Their case is strongly reminiscent of the two Australian travel bloggers Jolie King and Mark Firkin, and the French backpacker Benjamin Briere, all travelling in campervans around Asia.”
She added: “It’s now been three months since Topher and Bridget went missing. Iran has arrested more than a dozen foreigners in the past 6 months alone. ‘Quiet diplomacy’ never works to the detainee’s advantage in such cases.”
Topher Richwhite is the son of David Richwhite, 74, who is a Switzerland- and possibly London – based investment banker.
He was listed as one of the richest men in New Zealand in the 1990s.
David Richwhite partnered with Sir Michael Fay to form Fay, Richwhite and Company, a firm that was the main focus of the Winebox Inquiry in the 1990s, which was set up to investigate claims of corruption and incompetence in the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and Inland Revenue Department (IRD).
The New Zealand Herald said in 2000 that the Fay, Richwhite, and others extracted vast amounts of money from the Winebox companies, saying: “These profits are well documented because the big players in the inquiry – Bank of New Zealand, Brierley Investments, Capital Markets/Fay, Richwhite and European Pacific Investments – have all been listed on the stock exchange.
“While individual shareholders have lost money in all these companies, individuals particularly Sir Michael Fay and David Richwhite, have walked away with big profits.
“A sizable portion of these profits were leveraged from tax avoidance deals investigated in the Winebox inquiry.”
Iran has reportedly been cracking down on foreign tourists in the country, who it has increasingly been labelling as ‘spies’. France recently rejected Iranian claims that two detained French nationals, Cecile Kohler and her husband Jacques Paris, were ‘spies’.
Iran has been gripped by protests since the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, from Saqqez, Kurdistan Province, who was on a visit to Tehran when she was arrested by morality police accused of violating hijab rules on 13th September.
She was allegedly beaten while in custody and spent the following days in a coma in the hospital before succumbing in the ICU on 16th September.
The clinic where she was treated said in a now-deleted social media post that she had been admitted brain-dead.
Alleged medical scans of her skull leaked by hackers showed that she had suffered bone fractures, haemorrhages, and brain oedema.
Anti-regime media are claiming that Mahsa’s medical records showing her history of heart disease were faked by the Iranian government.
The protests her death sparked are ongoing and, according to the non-profit Iran Human Rights, at least 201 people, including 28 children, have been killed so far, according to its latest figures released on 12th October.
