FERGIE: I WANT £25M FOR FAKE SHEIKH STING
Duchess’s astonishing legal battle for lost earnings and humiliation over Andrew cash-for-access scandal
THE Duchess of York has launched an astounding lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch, demanding more than £25million over the cash-for-access sting that destroyed her reputation.
In explosive court documents, Fergie claims undercover reporter Mazher Mahmood tricked her when she offered to introduce him to Prince Andrew for £500,000.
But in a vigorous counterattack, lawyers for Mr Murdoch’s publishing company accuse her of ‘dishonesty’ and attempted fraud, and describe her case as ‘defective and embarrassing’.
The staggering £25million figure reflects what the Duchess believes she lost in earnings after her reputation was demolished by the incident.
She is also seeking an additional undisclosed sum for the ‘serious ‘DISTRESS’: The Duchess of York wants compensation
She claims cartoons would have made £22m
distress and upset’ the story caused. Mahmood, also known as ‘the Fake Sheikh’, posed as an Indian businessman when he secretly filmed the Duchess agreeing to set up the meeting with her ex-husband.
In the 2010 sting she was also recorded accepting £27,600 ‘to show commitment’ to a proposed investment. At one point she told the reporter: ‘I can open any door you want.’
But the writ claims Mahmood – who was jailed last month for tampering with evidence in the collapsed drugs trial of pop star Tulisa Contostavlo – invaded the Duchess’s privacy and ‘used deceit’ to induce her to make ‘unguarded statements to her detriment’.
She says that when the News Of The World ran the story, it took her comments out of context, causing ‘serious embarrassment, humiliation, distress and reputational damage’ and huge financial losses.
News Group Newspapers, which published the now defunct tabloid, insists that the story, which was headlined Fergie ‘Sells’ Andy for £500k, was both true and in the public interest. A 21-page defence document alleges that the Duchess was prepared to ‘enter into a corrupt arrangement’ to secure access to Andrew.
It says she suggested to Mahmood that ‘commercial favours could be bought from a member of the Royal Family’ and that her ex-husband’s trade envoy role could be exploited ‘provided the price was right and the money went to her and not the Duke of York’.
Until now details of the legal action, launched seven months after Mahmood was charged by police, have remained private, but last week a High Court judge ordered that they could be made public.
Sarah Ferguson, as she then was, married Andrew in 1986. But the couple separated in 1992, two months after photographs were published showing her having her toes sucked by financial adviser John Bryan.
After the couple divorced in 1996, she received £2million in a settlement and went on to draw £2million a year as a WeightWatchers ambassador from 1996 to 2007.
After that she no longer enjoyed a guaranteed income but made money from books, the US lecture circuit and endorsements.
The writ reveals astonishing details of her earnings. In the year before the cash-for-access scandal she made £750,000 from speaking engagements and media work. Yet at the same time she was reportedly on the brink of bankruptcy.
In the year after the article appeared her earnings dropped to £54,000 and the following year she made nothing at all.
‘The Duchess has lost approximately £510,000 each year of expected income from speaking engagements and articles in the media,’ says the writ.
And two TV animation projects, Fergie’s Farm and Tea For Ruby, foundered because the ‘international humiliation and a storm of adverse publicity’ scared off poten- tial investors. The writ, lodged at the High Court, says that she ‘lost the opportunity to pursue these projects’ which would, it is claimed, have generated £22 million from 2010 to the present day.
‘The Duchess estimates her financial loss to date at £25,060,000. In addition... the Duchess suffered serious distress and upset for which she is entitled to compensation.’
But News Group Newspapers say that even if the Duchess did suffer financial losses, they were caused by ‘her own illegality’. In particular, they cite her ‘attempts to gain a pecuniary advantage by deception and to commit fraud’.
After the story was published, the Duchess apologised for a ‘serious lapse of judgment’ and said that her financial situation was ‘under stress’.
In a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey a few weeks later, she further explained her behaviour by saying that she had been drinking and was ‘in the gutter at that moment’.
Buckingham Palace said at the time that Andrew categorically denied any knowledge of meetings between Mahmood and his ex-wife, with whom he remains on friendly terms.
The News Of The World targeted the Duchess after hearing from a source that she had introduced a genuine businessman to Andrew and was expecting to gain what she apparently called a ‘lick of the spoon’ – financial kickbacks that would ‘save her bacon’.
At the time she was facing much-publicised financial difficulties, including claims for unpaid bills amounting to almost £200,000. Her New York company Hartmoor, founded to encompass various ventures, folded the previous year with debts of £650,000. Mahmood is named as a defendant in the writ along with News Group Newspapers (NGN), former News Of The World editor Colin Myler and ex-News International legal affairs manager Tom Crone. Last month, the reporter
was jailed for 15 months for conspiring to pervert the course of justice following over the collapsed drugs trial of former X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos. Following the verdict, it was announced that 18 civil claims were being launched against Mahmood which could total as much as £800million.
When the Duchess encountered him at The Mark Hotel in New York on May 13, 2010, he was posing as a wealthy businessman called Mohsin Khan. The meeting was arranged by a friend of the Duchess, a clairvoyant called Azra Scagliarini.
Mahmood claimed to be from Tata Equity, part of the Indian conglomerate, the Tata Group.
The two sides differ on who first mentioned Andrew. Fergie’s legal team say Mahmood raised the subject after expressing interest in financially backing her business ventures. But the newspaper’s lawyers said it was the Duchess who ‘introduced the idea of Mahmood meeting the Duke’.
The defence document says: ‘She said she would “go this week and talk to Andrew, who I’d like you to meet”. She told Mahmood: “You need to talk to Andrew... you need to talk to him because you two are exactly the same”.’
Five days later the Duchess and Mahmood met again, this time at Mosimann’s private dining club in Belgravia, London, where her assistant, Camilla, presented the reporter with a confidentiality agreement to sign. He did not do so.
The writ says Mahmood stated he ‘was willing to invest the sum of £500,000’ in her business ventures, although this is denied by NGN.
But NGN say in the defence document: ‘The Duchess proposed that she and Mahmood would agree a percentage that she would receive on any deal that Mahmood arranged following his discussions with the Duke of York.
‘The Duchess also raised the figure of £500,000 as an “introduction fee” for arranging a meeting with the Duke of York.’
Immediately after their meal at Mosimann’s they went to a Mayfair apartment hired by Mahmood and resumed their discussions.
The Duchess was recorded accepting $40,000 (£27,600) in cash from Mahmood to pay an ex-employee.
According to the newspaper’s lawyers, the Duchess said: ‘If you want Andrew, the five hundred is fine but that’s on big business and you do wire transfer.’
She mentioned it again later saying: ‘You send it to the bank account that I tell you to send it to... then you open up all the channels that ever you need. Whatever you want, then you meet Andrew and that’s fine. That’s when you really open up whatever you want.’
Later she added: ‘I can open any door you want. And I will, for you.’
However her lawyers say when the article – which caused ‘enormous distress’ – was published her comments were taken out of context.
This is denied by NGN, which says she ‘dishonestly made false representations... to make a gain for herself, namely a very substantial fee’.
NGN also deny the Duchess’ claim that there was no public interest in running the story, arguing that the
Sarah insisted money went to her, not Andrew
Duchess ‘was prepared to enter into a corrupt arrangement to secure access for a previously unknown person she hardly knew to the Duke of York’. She was also prepared to ‘exploit his position’ as Britain’s trade ambassador.
And the NGN document adds: ‘The Duchess represented to a previously unknown person that commercial favours and inside information could be bought from a member of the Royal Family, and the role of a UK ambassador for trade could be turned to account for private profit, provided the price was right and the money went to her and not the Duke of York.’
The newspaper also believed that after taking a fee for the introduction, the Duchess would have a powerful incentive to obtain valuable secrets from Andrew to sell for a profit.
And it contends that she did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy, as she claims, as the story concerned her business dealings not her private life. Her statements about securing access were, it says, ‘untrue and, as the Duchess knew, dishonest’.
She repeatedly told Mahmood she was in a desperate financial situation, about to go bankrupt, and was financially inept, the defence says.
The newspaper says that it will refer to her own description of herself. In her autobiography My Story, she said she was reckless and spendthrift, and in Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey To Find Herself she said she was in a ‘landslide of debt’.