Petra Ecclestone’s socialite ex-husband accused of being part of £266m money laundering operation

Deposits of cash aroused suspicion as they were akin to those ‘as may come from a Premier League football stadium on a match day’, prosecutor tells Leeds court

Socialite James Stunt makes a hand gesture as he arrives at Leeds Crown Court on 5 January (Peter Byrne/PA Wire)

Socialite James Stunt has gone on trial accused of being part of £266m money-laundering operation.

Stunt, the ex-husband of heiress Petra Ecclestone, is one of eight defendants facing charges of money laundering involving depositing cash into the account of Bradford gold dealer Fowler Oldfield.

Prosecutor Nicholas Clarke QC told jurors at Leeds Cloth Hall Court on Tuesday that the cash, which they allege was brought into business addresses owned or managed by the defendants between January 2014 and September 2016, was “criminal cash”.

The money was carried in carrier bags, holdalls and sports bags, the court heard. It would be transported in hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time before being paid into Fowler Oldfield's bank account, prosecutors said.

Five defendants from Fowler Oldfield – Greg Frankel, Daniel Rawson, Paul Miller, Heidi Buckler and Haroon “Harry” Rashid – argue that it cannot be proven that any of the cash was criminal. The other defendants – Stunt, Alexander Tulloch and Francesca Sota – say they “don't know whether it was”, Mr Clarke said.

He told jurors: “The prosecution says 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.”

Stunt married the daughter of F1 tycoon Bernie Ecclestone in Italy in 2011. The former couple had three children together before divorcing in 2017.

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 exceeded collections from busy high street banks,” he said. “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.”

The account was referred to police, who found that between August and September 2016 daily cash deposits ranged between £787,540 and £2,424,380, with an average of £1,706,823, jurors heard.

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.

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.

Additional reporting by the Press Association