Ex Ecclestone son-in-law cleared at £200m money laundering trial

James Stunt, the former son-in-law of FI supremo Bernie Ecclestone, has been cleared of involvement in one of the UK’s largest ever money laundering operations

James Stunt, 43, has been found not guilty by a unanimous verdict of any involvement in a multimillion money laundering operation.

Four people were convicted at the trial and found guilty of laundering millions of pounds in cash through Fowler Oldfield, a jewellery business and gold dealer based in Bradford, run by one of the defendants Gregory Frankel.

The offices of Stunt’s company, Stunt & Co, in Mayfair in the heart of London were used as a collection point for the cash, but Stunt always denied any knowledge of the operation. Stunt & Co was a precious metals production business, set up in 2014, which was liquidated in 2020.

After Stunt was cleared at the Crown Court in Leeds after an 11-week trial, funded by legal aid, he said he had been through ‘nine years of hell’.

Speaking out the court Stunt said: ‘I have always maintained my innocence and am very thankful to the jury for seeing through the evidence and doing its job.’

The other four defendants at the trial, Gregory Frankel, 47, Daniel Rawson, 47, Haroon Rashid, 54, and Arjun Babber, 32, were found guilty of money laundering at Leeds Cloth Hall Nightingale Crown Court. However, Frankel, Rashid and Babber were not in court but are on the run.

Stunt, the ex husband of Petra Ecclestone, was living in Los Angeles at the time of the money laundering activity and he always denied any knowledge that the gang was using his property in London as a collection point for the money.

The scale of the money laundering was huge, with millions of pounds being processed on a daily basis through branches of NatWest from November 2012 to June 2016. The banking giant was fined £264m in 2021 for its failures to stop the laundering under the Money Laundering Regulations. 

While bank employees raised concerns about the cash deposits, no action was taken for years, despite warnings about the volumes of cash being deposited, often in black plastic rubbish bags. Staff at the Tooting branch of NatWest in South London, for example, reported deposits of more than a £1m a day in cash some weeks.

The trial followed a detailed and comprehensive West Yorkshire Police investigation into the activities of the four defendants, which unearthed large amounts of unexplained cash passing through businesses.

The cash was credited to the bank account of Fowler Oldfield after being collected from three different sites: Fowler Oldfield’s own premises at an industrial-style unit at Hall Lane, Bradford, the offices of Stunt & Co, Leconfield House, Curzon St, London, and Pure Nines, New House, in Hatton Garden, London.

The cash was brought into business addresses owned or managed by these defendants. It was delivered by cash couriers in sports bags, carrier bags and holdalls full of hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time, all of which was paid into the bank account of Fowler Oldfield.

The prosecution case established that this cash represented criminal property and Fowler Oldfield was being used as the vehicle to launder the dirty cash.

The cash was counted on the premises by staff using specialist counting machines such as those used in banks. The money was then bundled together for collection by G4S or the Post Office, who then delivered it to the NatWest bank to be deposited into Fowler Oldfield’s bank account.

Assistant chief constable Pat Twiggs of West Yorkshire Police said: ‘This was a sophisticated operation designed to launder a substantial amount of money connected to criminal activity in a number of regions across the UK.

‘I have no doubt whatsoever that this cash is linked to organised crime activity, including drugs and wider criminality and I am pleased that we successfully demonstrated that to the court.

‘By doing so we have uncovered a wider network of criminality and managed to cause significant disruption to their activities.

‘At no point during our investigation did anyone come forward to claim any of the money that we seized.

‘But the truth is that these people, some of whom lived very lavish lifestyles, all profited from the misery caused by drugs and gangs.’

Confiscation proceedings will be pursued against the four individuals under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Hannah Von Dadelszen, chief crown prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service, said: ‘This case is one of the largest money laundering prosecutions ever brought to the courts in England and Wales.

‘It involved a colossal quantity of cash, undoubtedly derived from criminal activity.  These defendants were at the heart of the operation to launder and legitimise the dirty cash, bringing it into the banking system.

‘Criminal justice enforcement, involving a number of agencies, have sent an important message out about the wholesale laundering of criminal proceeds. We have already seen the successful prosecution of 12 cash couriers who were bringing large bundles of criminal cash into Fowler Oldfield. Their convictions will hopefully deter them and others from becoming involved in the same way, in the future.’

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