Kasia Al Thani | |
House: | Thani (by marriage) |
Birth Date: | 2 October 1976 |
Birth Place: | Kraków |
Death Place: | Marbella |
Place Of Burial: | Córdoba Province |
Religion: | Islam |
Sheikha | |
Issue: | Sheikha Malak Sheikha Yasmine Sheikha Reem |
Kasia Al Thani (2 October 1976 – 29 May 2022)[1] [2] was the third wife of Sheikh Abdelaziz bin Khalifa Al Thani, the son of Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar.
She was born as Kasia Gallanio in Kraków, Poland,[3] but grew up in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, United States.[4] While she was a 19-year-old student in Paris, she met her future husband, who had lived in exile in France since 1992 in a palace on Avenue Montaigne.[5] In 2004, she became his third wife.[6] They had three daughters together: Sheikha Malak (b. 2005), Sheika Yasmine (b. 2005) [both twins], and Sheikha Reem (b. 2006). In 2007, she launched a luxury gifting shopping company called Savoir-Faire.com, which went into voluntary liquidation in 2010.[7] She discovered fraudulent activity on her husband's account at Barclays Bank in Marbella and spearheaded a €50m/£40m legal action against the bank. In 2009, Barclays settled for an undisclosed amount.[8] Afterwards, she filed for divorce, and the couple fought over custody of their daughters for ten years, after allegations that he sexually assaulted their eldest child. In April 2018, she joined the FC Martigues business team.[9] She resided in Marbella, Spain, where she was found dead of an apparent drug overdose on 29 May 2022. She was buried by the arabic rite in a not revealed town in Córdoba.[10]