Tycoons left ‘ruined’ after £14m legal fight with ‘Vamp in the Veil’
A MULTIMILLIONAIRE couple who claimed they were bankrupted by a fake Arabian “princess” nicknamed the “Vamp in the Veil” have lost a six-year fight to get her jailed.
Amanda Clutterbuck, 64, and Ian Paton, 53, claimed Sara al-amoudi passed herself off as the daughter of a Saudi billionaire while conning them out of a £14million London property portfolio.
The pair opened a high-profile court case against Ms Amoudi in 2014, during which she became known as the “Vamp in the Veil”, arriving at court in a Rollsroyce Phantom with HRH number plates, wearing a burka and five-inch platform heels, and entering the building flanked by minders.
The couple argued that, far from being a Saudi royal, she was a former cocaine-using prostitute from Ethiopia, who duped Ms Clutterbuck and Mr Paton into transferring six flats into her name. In return, Ms Amoudi claimed Mr Paton had been her secret lover and that he transferred the properties to her to repay millions she had lent him out of suitcases brimming with cash.
Ms Amoudi denied ever having been a prostitute, which was accepted by High Court judge Mrs Justice Asplin, when she dismissed the couple’s case against her in February 2014.
The judge backed Ms Amoudi’s claim that the real estate was transferred into her name to pay off cash loans she made to Mr Paton while they were having a “clandestine relationship”. But for the past six years the couple have been campaigning to have Ms Amoudi prosecuted for what they claimed were multiple acts of fraud and identity theft.
They have now lost again in a High Court attempt to force the police to reopen the case against her by having a judge start a judicial review .
In September last year, the Met Police told the couple Ms Amoudi would not be facing trial and that the criminal investigation was being closed for good.
The Met had previously indicated its decision not to prosecute and that decision was confirmed after Ms Clutterbuck and Mr Paton exercised their formal “victim right to review”.
George Paton, representing the couple as well as himself, told Judge Richard Hermer QC that Ms Clutterbuck and Mr Paton had been ruined and that their relatives had lost millions, too.
Judge Hermer rejected the attempt to challenge the police decision, describing the couple’s case as “unarguable”.