I wish I hadn’t gone to sleazy charity dinner

. . . admits Ocado boss who attended Presidents Club

OCADO boss Tim Steiner has come clean about his presence at the sleazy male-only Presidents Club charity do which took place last month.

Speaking for the first time since he was named on the guest list at the City event, Steiner, 48, said he wished he had not attended the bash where hostesses were made to wear skimpy black dresses and high heels and accused guests of groping them.

Others named on the guest list for the event hosted by author and comedian David Walliams included Sir Philip Green, Dragon’s Den star Peter Jones, Robert Tchenguiz and MP Nadhim Zahawi. The dinner at the Dorchester Hotel raised money for charities, including Great Ormond Street Hospital. Steiner distanced the online supermarket group from the event saying he attended the dinner in a personal capacity. He added that he was ‘shocked’ by what he read when the allegations first came to light after an undercover investigation by the Financial Times. ‘With the benefit of hindsight I wouldn’t have attended knowing what I do now. And to be clear we at Ocado have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to such behaviours, any forms of harassment and the behaviour described by the FT,’ he said.

Steiner, a former Goldman Sachs trader, hit the headlines in 2016 after he left Belinda, his wife of 14 years and mother of his four children, and moved in with the Polish lingerie model Patrycja Pyka, 20 years his junior.

When Steiner and Belinda divorced he was forced to divide his £116m fortune with her. Assets divided included a £15m mansion in Highgate, London, and a ski chalet in France.

The Presidents Club Charitable Trust was launched in 1985, but the club flourished as the City prospered from the sweeping financial deregulation encouraged by then prime minister Margaret Thatcher. It held men-only dinner parties where rich guests were encouraged to make hefty charitable donations through prize auctions.

Following the FT’s revelations about the Presidents Club dinner, the charity was forced to close.