connections, particularly in the Middle East and in motor racing. In 1977 he set up Mark Thatcher Racing, which ran into financial difficulties. Missing during 1982 Paris-Dakar rally On 9 January 1982 Thatcher, his French driver, Anne-Charlotte Verney, and their mechanic went missing for six days in the Sahara whilst driving a Peugeot 504 in the Paris-Dakar Rally. They were declared missing on 12 January. His father flew to Dakar, where a large-scale search was launched, including six military aircraft from three countries and Algerian ground troops. On 14 January, the Algerian military spotted Thatcher's party 50 km (31 miles) off course. This caused international embarrassment to his mother. The Prime Minister insisted on paying £2,000 personally towards the cost of the search, and an unpaid 11,500 dinar hotel bill, a third of which was for drinks. Before competing he said: "I've now raced in Le Mans and other things – this rally is no problem." In 2004, Thatcher wrote about his experience: "I did absolutely no preparation. Nothing." "We must have hit something. ... We stopped. The others stopped too, took a note of where we were and went on. But the silly bastards – instead of telling everyone we were 25 miles east when they finished the section, they told them we were 25 miles west." "So The Boss (the prime minister) does entirely the right thing, picks up the phone to the ambassador in Algiers and says, "Can you find out what is going on?" The ambassador then rings the prefect of the region who says there are four people missing and that I am one of them." Business career During the mid to late 1980s, concerns were frequently expressed about possible conflicts of interest between his business interests and his mother's political visits. In 1984 his mother faced questions in the House of Commons about his involvement in representing the bid of Cementation, a British company and a subsidiary of Trafalgar House, to build a university in Oman at a time when the prime minister was urging Omanis to buy British. He has denied claims that in 1985 he received millions of pounds in commissions in relation to the £45 billion Al-Yamamah arms deal, a controversial arms sale by British Aerospace to Saudi Arabia; he has not denied that a house in Belgravia, London, was purchased for him for £1 million in 1987 by an offshore