Ecclestone’s ex-husband accused of links to money-laundering operation

THE socialite and former husband of heiress Petra Ecclestone, James Stunt, has gone on trial accused of being part of a £266 million moneylaundering operation.

Stunt is one of eight defendants charged with money-laundering involving depositing cash in the account of Bradford gold dealer Fowler Oldfield.

Prosecutors say the cash was brought into business addresses owned or managed by the defendants between January 2014 and September 2016.

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 carried in sports bags, carrier bags and holdalls in hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time – and all paid into the bank account of Fowler Oldfield.

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 said.

He told jurors: “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.”

The prosecution say cash from “a lot of criminal activity” was collected together and taken to Fowler Oldfield in Bradford, West Yorkshire, 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.”

Jurors were told West Yorkshire Police launched Operation

Larkshot – an investigation into large amounts of cash being credited to the bank account of Fowler Oldfield collected from three sites, Fowler Oldfield’s own premises, the offices of James Stunt in central London and a new company called Pure Nines in Hatton Garden.

Mr Clarke said substantial amounts of cash were being paid into a bank account of Fowler Oldfield Limited 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,” Mr Clarke said.

The wider investigation discovered that from January 1 2014 until September 16 2016, more than £266 million in cash and unknown deposits were paid into the Fowler Oldfield bank account.

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.