Ecclestone ex on trial for laundering £266m
Former son-in-law of F1 chief accused of being part of gang that deposited cash and bought gold with it
THE former son-in-law of Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula 1 billionaire, was allegedly part of a money laundering gang that deposited bags full of “criminal cash” every day, a court has heard.
James Stunt, the former husband of Mr Ecclestone’s daughter Petra, is on trial accused of being part of a £266million operation which put the money into the account of a jewellery company and used the proceeds to buy gold.
Opening the case to jurors at Leeds Cloth Hall Court yesterday, prosecutor Nicholas Clarke QC said it was “blindingly obvious this was criminal cash”.
The court heard the money was in sports bags, carrier bags and holdalls in hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time and paid into the account of Fowler Oldfield, a Bradford based gold dealer.
Prosecutors say the cash was brought into business addresses owned or managed by the defendants between January 2014 and September 2016.
Five defendants from Fowler Oldfield – Greg Frankel, Daniel Rawson, Paul Miller, Heidi Buckler and Haroon “Harry” Rashid – all say the prosecution cannot prove that any of the cash was criminal property.
The other defendants – Stunt, Alexander Tulloch and Francesca Sota – say they “don’t know whether it was”, Mr Clarke QC said.
He told jurors: “The prosecution say this is nonsense... Each of them must at the very least have suspected that the source of the money was criminal in origin – it could not have come from a legitimate source and no legitimate source has ever been identified for it.”
The prosecution say cash from “a lot of criminal activity” was collected together and taken to Fowler Oldfield, sometimes via businesses in London.
Mr Clarke said: “These defendants then hid its origin by washing it through a company bank account and using the proceeds to buy gold.”
West Yorkshire Police launched Operation Larkshot, an investigation into cash being credited to the bank account of Fowler Oldfield collected from three sites – Fowler Oldfield’s own premises, the offices of Stunt in central London and a new company called Pure Nines in Hatton Garden.
Mr Clarke said substantial amounts were being paid in from 2014. He told jurors they aroused the suspicions of bank staff because “they were of such an amount, on a daily basis, as may come from a Premier League football stadium on a match day or similar size venue or event”.
“They were in volumes that exceed collections from busy high street banks. The payments were getting much bigger in 2016. On some days, well over a million pounds in used notes was being paid into the Fowler Oldfield account.”
Between August and September 2016 daily deposits ranged between £787,540 and £2,424,380, with an average of £1,706,823, jurors heard.
From Jan 1 2014 until Sept 16 2016, more than £266million in cash and unknown deposits were paid into the Fowler Oldfield bank account.
The court heard that after the cash had credited it was transferred mainly to two Birmingham gold suppliers, Cookson Precious Metals and Metalor Technologies to buy gold.
Buckler, 45, Frankel, 44, Miller, 45, Rashid, 51, Rawson, 45, Sota, 34, Stunt, 40 and Tulloch, 41 all deny money laundering. Stunt and Sota also deny forgery.
Mr Stunt married Ms Ecclestone in Italy in 2011. They had three children but divorced in 2017.