James Stunt trial: Socialite’s brother pictured counting cash ‘as part of £266m money laundering operation’
CCTV footage and images show behind the scenes of alleged network claimed to have operated in London and Bradford between January 2014 and September 2016
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A photograph of socialite James Stunt’s office allegedly being used to count bundles of criminal cash has been shown during a £266 million money laundering trial.
The image, seen by a jury at Leeds Cloth Hall Court, appears to show four people crowded around a circular table filled with piles of cash and a banknote counting machine.
Prosecutors claim the photo was taken at the Mayfair office of Stunt and Co in February 2016 and sent by one of the eight defendants in the case to a colleague via WhatsApp.
Businessman Stunt, former husband of Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone, is alleged to have taken “a very hands-on approach” in the alleged network which the court heard saw £266 million deposited in the bank account of Bradford gold dealer Fowler Oldfield over two years.
His late brother Lee Stunt is the man seen sitting in front of the counting machine in the photograph, the court was told.
Meanwhile, CCTV footage seen by the jury on Wednesday and later released by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) shows a man delivering a holdall full of bank notes wrapped in what appears to be black bin liners.
He can be seen taking his flat cap off and using it to wipe the black bags while two other men count cash beside him.
Prosecutors claim the “criminal cash” was brought into business addresses owned or managed by Stunt and his co-defendants between January 2014 and September 2016.
The court previously heard hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time was brought in carrier bags and holdalls to Fowler Oldfield in Bradford, West Yorkshire.
Jurors were told the alleged money laundering then “went national” as one of Fowler Oldfield’s directors, Greg Frankel, became a vice president of Stunt & Co, and Stunt’s premises in London also started receiving cash.
Prosecutor Nicholas Clarke QC said the defendants hid the origin of the money by washing it through a company bank account and using the proceeds to buy gold.
On Wednesday jurors were shown messages between Mr Stunt’s employees and co-defendants Alex Tulloch and Francesca Sota, and staff at Fowler Oldfield.
The court heard one message from Mr Tulloch in November 2015 said: “James not happy though... James wants to know what his profit is for this week. Concerned about profitability etc.”
The court was told another message from Mr Tulloch in April 2016, when Mr Stunt was living out of the country, said: “Ensure that I get updated at least daily on £ in London and Bradford. Gold sold: Lock ins (Scotia), Cookson’s, Dubai. Refining: Any material coming out of the refinery.”
Mr Clarke said this showed Stunt was “taking a very hands-on approach even though he was a very long way away at the time”.
The prosecutor said Stunt was the owner and director of Stunt & Co but “delegated much of the responsibility to others”.
He told the court: “He was not involved in the day-to-day management of the buying and selling of gold and was not included in most of the correspondence via electronic means.
“However, emails between others demonstrate that he was very much aware of and authorised what was going on.”
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.
Mr Stunt and the defendants from his company - Mr Tulloch and Ms Sota - say they “don’t know whether it was”, the court has heard.
But prosecutors say it is “blindingly obvious this was criminal cash” and each of the defendants “must at the very least have suspected that the source of the money was criminal in origin”.
Jurors were told West Yorkshire Police launched Operation Larkshot to investigate large amounts of cash being credited to the bank account of Fowler Oldfield and 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”.
The wider investigation discovered that from 1 January 2014 until 16 September 2016, more than £266m in cash and unknown deposits were paid into the Fowler Oldfield bank account, the court heard.
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, daughter of F1 tycoon Bernie Ecclestone, in Italy in 2011 but divorced in 2017.
Additional reporting by Press Association