James Stunt ‘told PA to forge his signature to buy £320,000 Andy Warhol painting’

Socialite James Stunt has arrived at court with his girlfriend today as he prepares to give evidence at his £266million dirty money trial. 

Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone’s ex-husband, who was pictured at Leeds Cloth Hall Court with his girlfriend Helena Robinson this morning, is accused of receiving £46million as part of a gang that laundered millions of pounds of criminal cash over a three-year period.

He is one of eight defendants accused of  depositing £266million in the bank account of Bradford gold dealer Fowler Oldfield between January 2014 and September 2016.

Prosecutors claimed Stunt may have been involved in the alleged scheme because the breakdown of his marriage to Miss Ecclestone meant the ‘river of money’ from her family was ‘running dry’.

Giving evidence at court yesterday for the first time as his defence opened, Stunt, who has denied the allegations of money laundering and forgery, admitted taking cocaine ‘every day for two years’ after his brother’s death and discussed the size of his own genitalia.

The 40-year-old spoke through tears as he described his late brother Lee as ‘the nicest person I’ve ever known’ and blasted the ‘slanderous charges’ made against his sibling.

Stunt also told the jury he has been addicted to morphine, cocaine and gambling and has ‘an addictive personality’.

And he addressed his marriage to Miss Ecclestone, telling jurors he was in love with his then wife, ‘not her bank account’.

He denied ‘living off’ her wealth. ‘You only live once and I like to enjoy myself. I like to live it up,’ he said in response to his barrister asking about him ‘playing up’ to his image.

Stunt then looked around the court and said: ‘I’m living it down at the moment.’

‘Having your life laid bare like this, we have to examine the good, the bad and the ugly. And I do play up to the public image sometimes, but there’s also insecurity’, he added.

‘People say about me, ‘You must have the smallest penis in the world’ and there must be some truth in that, metaphorically speaking – but I don’t think we need to get a microscope out,’ he told Leeds Cloth Hall Court.

Stunt also spoke of a family trust fund set up by the Ecclestone family and said: ‘That’s the kind of control Bernie Ecclestone had over my marriage’.

He recalled a panic attack at the Monza Grand Prix in Italy when his then father-in-law Bernie Ecclestone told him: ‘James, you’re having a panic attack.’

‘I didn’t know what was happening, and neither did my wife,’ he said. ‘And the Grand Prix doctor just shoved an injection into me.’

Stunt also told the court he was a ‘functioning addict’ at times, and the drugs had helped him at various moments including his divorce and the death of Lee in 2016.

He said after the death of his brother, who proescutors alleged was involved in the alleged scheme, he took cocaine ‘every day for two years’ and described the drug as a ‘good, bad friend’.

But he said for the last two years, he had been ‘clean’ and took regular urine tests with a doctor ‘for the sake of my children’.

Stunt also claimed that at one stage he was the ‘second biggest gambler in the world’, risking up to £5million in an evening and losing hundreds of thousands of pounds.

He added he was ‘awful with dates and terrible with numbers’ and suffers from ADHD, dyscalculia and dyslexia, and takes Ritalin for the ADHD.

The court has heard that Stunt took ‘a very hands-on approach’ as his company became involved in the ‘sophisticated’ £266million money-laundering operation.

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.

Prosecutor Nicholas Clarke KC has said the defendants hid the origin of the money by washing it through a company bank account and using the proceeds to buy gold. 

Jurors were shown messages between Stunt’s employees and co-defendants Alex Tulloch and Francesca Sota, and staff at Fowler Oldfield.

The court heard one message from Tulloch in November 2015 said: ‘James not happy though… James wants to know what his profit is for this week. Concerned about profitability etc.’

Another message from Tulloch in April 2016, when 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’.

He added that Stunt was the owner and director of Stunt & Co but ‘delegated much of the responsibility to others’.

‘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,’ the prosecutor told the court.

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 London premises also started receiving cash.

Five defendants from Fowler Oldfield – Greg Frankel, Daniel Rawson, Paul Miller, Heidi Buckler and Haroon ‘Harry’ Rashid – all say the prosecution cannot prove any of the cash was criminal property.

Stunt and the defendants from his company – Tulloch and Sota – say they ‘don’t know whether it was’, the court has heard.

The investigation discovered that from January 1 2014 until September 16 2016, more than £266million 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.

Stunt married Miss Ecclestone, daughter of F1 tycoon Bernie, in Italy in 2011. They had three children but divorced in 2017.

He told the court the couple met on a blind date set up by friends. After marrying, the couple moved to Beverly Hills in California.

Stunt insisted he was ‘not a kept man’, despite his ex-wife’s wealth. He told the court: ‘I did not live off my wife – she lived with me and I felt very uncomfortable living in a home which was not owned by me or my family, maybe that sounds old-fashioned, I don’t know.’

The trial continues.