I was an addict not a money launderer, says heiress Petra’s ex
Tearful James Stunt denies any role in £266m gold racket
JAMES Stunt yesterday laid bare his rollercoaster life of privilege, opulence and health problems to a jury.
The ex-husband of Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone spoke openly about his various addictions, ostentatious lifestyle and many rich and famous friends, including his contacts with the King.
He occasionally broke down in tears as he recalled his late brother, who died shortly before his offices were raided by police, and the breakdown of his marriage.
Stunt, 40, stands accused of being at the heart of a £266million money-laundering operation to turn criminal cash to gold.
Yesterday he gave evidence from the witness box at Leeds Cloth Hall Court about what he called the ‘false accusations’ against him and his determination to clear his name.
And he told the jury his London company HQ, where tens of millions of pounds in dirty cash was said to have been counted, was visited by many VIPs, including then prime minister David Cameron.
DRUG PROBLEMS
Stunt revealed he has been addicted to cocaine, Valium, morphine and gambling.
After the death of his older brother Lee, 37, in 2016 he took cocaine ‘every day for two years’ until he kicked the habit for the sake of his children, he told the court.
Gambling was a vice that cost him a fortune. He said he was a ‘degenerate’ gambler who could lose £5million ‘very quickly’.
Stunt claimed he was the ‘second largest gambler in the world at one point and the world’s largest black jack player’.
His Valium addiction was said to have started in 2008 when he said he suffered a ‘panic attack’ and personally ‘delayed the Monza Grand Prix’. He said F1 chief and his soon-to-be father-in-law Bernie Ecclestone ‘didn’t know what to do’ and the race doctor ‘shoved an injection in me’.
Meanwhile an addiction to morphine was linked to a ‘tennis injury’ he suffered in Los Angeles. ‘I’m the epitome of a functioning addict when on the stuff,’ he said. ‘It was amazing I could even walk with the amount of benzos and morphine I was taking.’
But the one substance he did not have a problem with was alcohol. He said he perhaps only drank twice in his life, but once was at the age of 14 when he was ‘dared’ to drink two bottles of champagne through a straw and suffered alcohol poisoning.
Stunt said he also has attention- deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and has been prescribed Ritalin to calm him down.
And he told the jury he had problems with words and numbers, suffering from dyslexia and dyscalculia, but he did have a good recall of ‘events’.
‘SPOILT’ UPBRINGING
The socialite said his businessman father was a ‘very wealthy man’ by the time he was born but had grown up on a council estate in Brixton, south London, nicknamed ‘Baghdad’ and was ‘self-made’.
The court heard Stunt divided his childhood between the exclusive neighbourhoods of Virginia Water in Surrey and London’s Belgravia.
He attended a private boarding school, Bradfield College in Berkshire but was ‘politely asked to leave’ because he ‘disrupted’ class so much as a result of his ADHD.
Stunt said he later returned and made a £250,000 donation to build a cricket pavilion in his name. ‘I wanted to say, “I was expelled, I bettered myself and here stands proof”.’
Stunt described himself as a ‘spoilt and very privileged’ child who moved in exclusive circles. The court heard he started three businesses bearing the Stunt name after spending five years at the European Business School in London, where he networked with the Saudi royal family and children of Russian oligarchs.
‘I believe in life it’s not what you know in life it’s who you know,’ he told the court.
MARRIED LIFE
Stunt said he met his future wife Petra on a blind date in 2006 when he was 24 and she was 18.
They were soon living together in the Chelsea Harbour apartment bought for Stunt by his father.
But their marriage in 2011 gave Stunt entry into a billionaire lifestyle. The case involved the mass production of gold bars and Stunt told the court he was given three gold bars as a wedding present by a billionaire family who attended.
The couple moved to Petra’s mansion in Beverly Hills, California, but they returned to the UK for the births of their daughter and twin sons for ‘tax reasons’.
Stunt claimed he felt uncomfortable living in his wife’s house. ‘I was not a kept man but I had a very rich wife,’ he said. He added: ‘I loved my wife, I didn’t love her bank account.’
Stunt said he enjoyed an ‘ostentatious’ lifestyle of expensive cars and mansions but said: ‘I fought not to be famous. I’m not like a Kardashian, I have never done anything to achieve fame. I had some money and married a famous man’s daughter.’
He told the jury he was a ‘giver not a receiver’ and said ‘money is not my God’. He added: ‘If you have it, flaunt it, if you have lost it you can make more.’
He also told the jury: ‘I am a very humble down-to-earth guy but I
am ostentatious in a nice way. I like to live it up but now I live it down.’ The court has heard Stunt may have become involved in money-laundering after cash from the Ecclestone family dried up with his divorce in 2017.
Stunt alleged his former fatherin-law Bernie was a ‘crook’ who had ‘control over his marriage’.
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
The businessman told the jury he didn’t want to ‘name drop’ but listed the famous he dealt with or were his friends. He claimed Mr Cameron visited his company office while prime minister.
The leader also sent him a letter at the time ‘thanking him for political donations’, he said.
The court heard when he was Prince of Wales, the now King Charles also wrote to him.
Stunt gave £ 140,000 to the
Prince’s charities. He also described Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish as friends and said he gave more than £1million to the star’s Aids foundation.
Disgraced politician Jonathan Aitken and author Jeffrey Archer, both of whom served jail terms for perjury, were also friends.
Australian mogul Kerry Packer was said to be an inspiration and Stunt recalled being with Tottenham Hotspur FC owner Joe Lewis during the financial crash when he ‘lost $800million in a day’.
BULLION BUSINESS
Stunt denied being involved in money-laundering and described the prosecution case as ‘ false accusations’.
He said he spent most of his time abroad and was not closely involved in the day to day running of his businesses, commenting: ‘I am not a nuts and bolts man.’ His business was based in Leconfield House, the former MI5 headquarters in Mayfair, central London, where the court heard £28million of ‘criminal cash’ was counted and sent to Bradford gold bullion dealer Fowler Oldfield.
Stunt said he had a long-term interest in gold and had his business not been shut down he would have made billions by now.
‘Yes I am naïve and I am not the smartest man in the room but we would have been extremely successful,’ he said.
Heidi Buckler, 45, Greg Frankel, 44, Paul Miller, 45, Haroon Rashid, 51, Daniel Rawson, 45, Francesca Sota, 34, Stunt and Alesancer Tulloch, 41, all deny money laundering. Stunt and Sota also deny forgery.
The trial continues.