Vichai home raid accused ‘in London with client’

ESCORT DENIES KNOWLEDGE OF WEST LONDON BURGLARY PLOT

AN escort accused of being the matriarch in Britain’s largest domestic burglary conspiracy, which targeted the home of Leicester City’s late owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, claimed she was only in London to keep one of the alleged raiders company.

Maria Mester, 47, also denied any knowledge of the plot, which also targeted other high profile figures.

Mester said the week-long trip to London meant she could “kill two birds with one stone” as it would allow her to spend time with her son, Emil Bogdan Savastru, 30, who is also accused of conspiring to carry out raids on homes in West London last December.

As well as raiding the home of Khun Vichai, prosecutors say the alleged plotters also carried a £25 million jewellery, cash and property theft from the home of socialite Tamara Ecclestone and her husband Jay Rutland, in Kensington.

Mester, Savastru and two others, Alexandru Stan and Sorin Marcovici, are accused of being part of the “supporting cast” to the burglars, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

They are not on trial for carrying out the raids.

Mester said she was paid up to £5,300 to accompany one of the alleged burglars, one of her regular clients, to London for a week in December.

Giving evidence through a Romanian interpreter at Isleworth Crown Court, Mester said: “I knew he was a sweet client, I thought ‘why not?’.

“I knew Bogdan was supposed to come back from Japan and I would kill two birds with one stone.”

Mester told defence counsel Leonard

Smith QC she was given little information about her client’s reason for being in London at the time.

She said: “He wasn’t an alcoholic, he wasn’t a drug addict, he wasn’t violent, he was civilised, educated and with good manners.

“From my point of view he was very generous. Apart from the money he would pay me, he would also give me presents.”

Mester described how she was a child bride in Romania and became a mother aged 17, before moving to Milan to work as a lap dancer, while her son was raised by her mother. She became an escort soon after turning 30, the court heard.

Prosecutors said Mester fled the UK immediately after the Ecclestone raid.

She was arrested on January 31 at Stansted Airport on her arrival in the UK, when she was said to have been wearing earrings identical to those stolen in the Ecclestone theft.

Asked if she had any conversations with them about carrying out the raids, Mester replied: “No, about all these burglaries, I found out from the lawyers and here in court.”

She denied any knowledge of having come into contact with property from those burglaries.”

All four defendants deny conspiracy to commit burglary, among other offences.

The trial continues.