Hedge fund boss cleared of ‘octopus’ grope assault
A MARRIED hedge fund boss has been cleared of committing an ‘octopus’-like assault on a junior investment banker more than 20 years ago.
Multimillionaire Crispin Odey, 62, nodded briefly as district judge Nicholas Rimmer found him not guilty of indecently assaulting the woman at his home in Chelsea in 1998, while his pregnant wife was away.
Judge Rimmer told Westminster magistrates’ court: ‘Despite the strength of her emotion and tears, her credibility has been thrown into question and her evidence is riddled with troubling inconsistencies.’
Mr Odey, then 39, was accused of putting his hand down the woman’s shirt to touch her breast and putting his hand up her skirt.
During his two-and-a-half day trial, he accused her of ‘exaggerating, massively’ her account of what happened.
He said the woman, then in her mid20s, had asked him where ‘this is going to end’. And he admitted he had propositioned her by replying: ‘If you’re lucky, it might end up in the bed.’
Mr Odey told the court: ‘I am embarrassed to say if she had gone along with it, I would have gone further.’
But he denied indecent assault, and said the allegation against him was ‘a horrible thing, a horrible slur’. The court heard the woman sent an email to Mr Odey in 2013 about the incident, in which she referred to him as a ‘sleazy, deceitful man who likes to prey on the innocence of young women’.
But she did not go to police until October 2017, after the #MeToo movement had begun. She then sent him another email – and admits lying in the message by saying she had instructed law firm Mishcon de Reya.
Mr Odey, now a father-of-three, said it was only at this point that he told his wife, Nichola Pease, who is also a hedge fund manager and has stood by him.
The judge told Mr Odey: ‘ I acquit you, and you will leave this courthouse with your good character intact.’