JAMES STUNT: Freezing my assets left me fighting for survival
LAWYER: You were in a 5-f loor, 6-bed house paid for by your father
JAMES Stunt told a jury he had to ‘fight for survival’ when he was made ‘bankrupt and homeless’ – before admitting he was put up in a luxury mansion.
Accused of being part of a £266million money-laundering operation, he said he was ‘flabbergasted’ when a judge ordered his assets be frozen.
A legal ‘restraint order’ seizing assets and controlling his finances was a ‘draconian act that says someone is guilty’, he told the jury. ‘It literally turns their life off, a breach of their human rights.’
The ex-husband of Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone added: ‘The Crown let me lose my houses. I was made bankrupt, homeless in a global pandemic and allowed to be mocked and fight for survival.’
But questioned by prosecutor Nicholas Clarke KC at Leeds Cloth Hall Court, he admitted he had been allowed to live in a fivestorey, six-bedroom house with a cinema room in upmarket South Kensington, London.
Stunt said his businessman father was paying the rent of almost £10,000 a month on the property, which he found ‘embarrassing’ and ‘shameful’.
Commenting on his position in the wake of his offices being raided in 2016, his marriage collapsing and his assets being frozen in 2018, the father- of-three said he was not even allowed to see his children.
‘It was like Herod has tried me as Christ, guilty before I’m innocent,’ he added. ‘A man who was once well revered became a selfimposed reclusive pariah.’
Stunt, 40, said the court order meant he could not afford to insure some of his assets and as a result police seized them from his home under a judge’s instruction. Asked about the seizure of his assets, he replied: ‘I am not playing the victim card here – I’m playing the reality card. I wish I looked like Brad Pitt and my flat smelt like CK1 [aftershave] but it doesn’t and I don’t.’
But the court heard the authorities allowed Stunt to raise funds through sales before the trial. He sold £1.4million of fine wine but said that was used to pay off debts and went into a ‘black hole’, while he got much less than what he paid for other items he sold.
A bank document Stunt signed around six months before his offices were raided by police put his net wealth at between £10million and £14.9million. Another official document signed by Stunt said most of his income was received from his wife Petra, from whom he was divorced in 2017.
Stunt previously told the jury he had never claimed to be a billionaire. But he confirmed he signed a document for a financial institution in November 2018 declaring his net worth was $4billion (then around £2.8billion). Yesterday he admitted this was ‘not 100 per cent accurate’, adding: ‘If I have misled the jury it was not my intention.’
Mr Clarke put it to Stunt that between his marriage in 2011 and 2016, his personal assets diminished and his bank interest and dividends fell to ‘almost nothing’.
Stunt said the position he found himself in meant ‘I was like a leper without a colony’.
He has insisted his business to buy gold and use his own refinery in Sheffield to make Stuntbranded gold bars was legitimate. The prosecution claims it was a ‘ cover story’ and millions of pounds of criminal cash was being turned into gold and sent to Dubai.
Stunt and seven others all deny money laundering. Stunt also denies forgery.
The trial continues.
‘It was like Herod tried me as Christ’