Tycoon’s ex-lover faces jail over robbery plot
A RUSSIAN businesswoman faces jail after being found guilty yesterday of plotting a robbery in which her ex-lover’s wife and daughter were tied up and threatened.
Karine Solloway, 59, had a five-year affair with Robert McKendrick, 57, during which she lent the married tycoon more than £1million. After the relationship went sour Solloway arranged for a fantasist called Paul Prior who claims to be an ex-SAS member to raid his palatial home in a bid to recoup some of the cash.
While Mr McKendrick was away in October last year a gang led by Prior burst into his house in Alderley Edge, Cheshire. They tied up and blindfolded his wife Priya and daughter Scarlett, 17 – who this week appeared in ITV reality show The Real Housewives of Cheshire – before making off with Chanel bags, Jimmy Choo shoes and Stella McCartney clothing. Some of the haul was traced to Prior’s London address and police found messages incriminating Solloway on his phone. They also showed how Prior recruited film extra Kimpton Mativenga as his ‘muscle’.
Solloway, who was born Karine Mouradian but married a British solicitor after fleeing the collapsing Soviet Union, denied arranging the raid but declined to give evidence at her Chester Crown Court trial. She looked bewildered yesterday as the jury convicted her and Mativenga of conspiracy to rob.
The trial heard that from 2010, father of three Mr McKendrick had been leading a double life, spending the week with Solloway in London and weekends at home with his family. After a legal battle involving one of his business schemes Solloway lent him £350,000 to help with the costs and £800,000 to keep the business afloat. But the trial heard that when the affair ended Mr McKendrick, who is understood to be reconciled with his wife, struggled to meet agreed repayments of the cash and Solloway plotted the robbery.
Solloway ran a healthcare scheme for expat Russians which apparently funded a mews flat near Regent’s Park where she spends the week, returning to spend the weekends in south London with her husband, now in his 80s.
The judge yesterday said she faces a substantial prison sentence when she is sentenced next month alongside Mativenga, 31, as well as Prior, 34, and Iain McGarry, 48, who both admitted conspiracy to rob.