RICHARD EDEN: Missing star jeweller, his misplaced £170 million and an intriguing hyperlink to Dunhill inheritor

He’s the exuberant entrepreneur who drives a Ferrari – or, sometimes, a Maserati – and dazzles pretty well everyone he meets, from multi-millionaire investors to Holly Willoughby, around whose graceful neck he fitted a £500,000 string of sparklers when appearing on ITV’s This Morning.

But after his jewellery company – backed by John Caudwell, billionaire founder of Phones4u – recorded a vertiginous 97 per cent rise sales in 2021 alone, Vashi Dominguez seemingly lost his Midas touch in catastrophic fashion.

By April 2023, the company had gone into liquidation. Preliminary investigations suggested that a stupefying £170million of investors’ money was unaccounted for. Caudwell subsequently acknowledged that he’d invested £1million, while two other big names had, I’m told, put in £10million and £15million respectively.

Of Vashi, who’d opened a glitzy ‘concept store’ in London’s Covent Garden and talked of opening 200 more around the world ‘in the near future’ – there was no sign. Nor has there been ever since.

But this week there has, I can disclose, been an intriguing development, with the removal – at some point between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning – of online listings which concerned two fundraisers in America. 

These – a lunch in New York and a dinner in Miami – were to be held in September 2022, just three months before Vashi’s company became the subject of a winding-up petition, brought by one of its London landlords, which was owed more than £250,000.

The online invitations for both US events stated that they were being hosted by Dunhill Ventures, the company established by Piers Dunhill, buccaneering great-grandson – or, by other accounts, great-great grandson – of tobacco magnate Alfred Dunhill. ‘Investors may RSVP to request event access,’ explained the online invitations.

Midas touch: Vashi Dominguez fits a £500,000 necklace on Holly Willoughby on This Morning in 2014

Dominguez (left) with Piers Dunhill in New York. Online listings concerning two fundraisers in America were removed this week

Dominguez’s jewellery was backed by John Caudwell, billionaire founder of Phones4u, until it went into liquidation in 2023

At first, this is all a bit of a blur for Dunhill, 30. ‘I have no idea of what you are talking about,’ he tells me by email, before adding: ‘From what I remember, [Vashi] has a jewellery company based in the UK.’

But, a few hours later, his memory recovers. The company hosting the lunches, he tells me via a representative, ‘used my name without my knowledge. I simply attended a lunch in New York, and didn’t speak. I never knew my name was being used for marketing purposes.’

The Miami lunch, adds Dunhill’s rep, ‘was cancelled, primarily because Vashi was sick’.

The following month, Dunhill and Vashi enjoyed a meeting in New York, which, judging by photos which remain online, was a carefree occasion. 

‘If it’s a Millionaires Mindset, then this must be the Billionaires Braintrust,’ runs a caption alongside a snap of the pair standing side by side. ‘Vashi Dominquez [sic], Vashi Jewelry. Piers Dunhill, Dunhill Ventures,’ adds the caption.

It’s believed that Dominguez is now holed up in Dubai. One of those who invested heavily in his company tells me that it ‘would be entirely appropriate for him to be investigated by the SFO’.

Dunhill twice declines to comment when asked if he would co-operate fully with the SFO on such an investigation.

But he has plenty on his plate. Earlier this year, I disclosed that his membership of 5 Hertford Street, most fashionable of London clubs, had been rescinded. 

And in October I revealed that he had attended roadshows for potential investors alongside a fellow financial entrepreneur called Renato Brioni – formerly known as Renato Libric, in which name he received a three-year prison sentence for ‘wire fraud’ in the USA in 2018 and was ordered to pay over $1.5million in compensation to those he’d defrauded.

Small change, of course, by the almost limitless millions missing from Dominguez’s accounts…