the times | Saturday August 1 2020 2GM 7
News
One of Britain’s most high-profile
hedge fund managers, who is also a
leading donor to the Conservative
Party, has been charged with indecent-
ly assaulting a woman 22 years ago.
Crispin Odey, 61, was charged in May
with assaulting the woman on July 13,
1998, at an address in Chelsea, west
London.
The investment tycoon, who made
millions in betting against the pound
after the 2016 EU referendum, is one of
the party’s biggest donors and has given
Fariha Karim
his eponymous asset management firm
in 1991.
He is a friend of Jacob-Rees Mogg,
the leader of the Commons, and is
married to Nichola Pease, a fellow fund
manager. He has three children with
Ms Pease.Crispin Odey gave
£1.7 million to the
ConservativesProminent Tory backer charged with 1998 indecent assault
it at least £1.7 million over the past
decade.
He has not yet entered a plea to the
charge and is due to appear at West-
minster magistrates’ court on Septem-
ber 28 after the case was delayed from
next week when it was initially due to
be held.
Yesterday he issued a statement say-
ing: “The allegation is denied and I will
strongly contest this matter.”
He told the Financial Times: “It’s all in
the court’s hands. It was a long time
ago.”
The attack is alleged to have hap-pened in Swan Walk, where he has a
home. A number of his businesses are
registered there.
Mr Odey is an outspoken Brexiteer
who has given more than £800,000 to
pro-Brexit campaigns.
He has also donated £32,000 to Ukip
under the leadership of Nigel Farage
and he gave Boris Johnson £10,000 in
June last year for his campaign to be-
come the leader of the Tory party.
Educated at Harrow, where his
father, George Odey, a former
Conservative MP, had been head boy,
and Christ Church, Oxford, he foundedThe couple’s fortune is estimated at
£775 million, according to the Sunday
Times Rich List last year.
Mr Odey made £220 million betting
that a vote to leave the EU in the 2016
referendum would cause the pound to
crash. He described the millions he had
made after the pound tumbled amid
fears that Britain would crash out of the
EU without an agreement as “a good
day”.
He also became known for having
spent £150,000 on a stone hen house,
described as Cluckingham Palace to
house prize poultry.Newly released court files contain alle-
gations that the Duke of York lobbied
the US government to secure Jeffrey
Epstein a controversial plea deal and
escape more serious charges.
The documents claim that when
Epstein faced a series of allegations of
sexually abusing minors in Florida the
Queen’s son put pressure on the gov-
ernment. The paedophile was jailed for
only 18 months in 2008.
The unsealed testimony also alleges
that Epstein sent an under-age girl to
have sex with Prince Andrew as part of
an effort to gather incriminating
evidence that could be used to black-
mail him. The prince has denied any
wrongdoing and when the case was
originally heard in 2015 a judge ordered
it to be struck from the record without
ruling on its veracity.
The alleged victim, referred to as
Jane Doe #3, who appeared to be
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, claimed she
was told to “give the prince whatever he
demanded” in encounters in London,
New York and the Virgin Islands and
was then told to “report back to him
[Epstein] on the details of the sexual
abuse”. The documents state that
Epstein used his “significant social and
political connections... including
efforts on his behalf by Prince Andrew”.
The claims, which appear amid court
papers from a civil suit filed by the
alleged victim against Epstein’s former
girlfriend and business associate Ghis-
laine Maxwell in 2015, were unsealed
by a federal judge late on Thursday
night. The case was settled.
An appeals court that released other
documents from the same case last year
advised that the claims should be treat-
ed with caution and read by the public
“with discernment”. A friend of the
duke called the allegation “a straight-
forward untruth. No ifs, no buts.”
Ms Maxwell, 58, was arrested last
month and pleaded not guilty to char-
ges that she groomed minors for Ep-
stein between 1994 and 1997. She had
fought to stop the release of the docu-
ments. They suggest that Ms Maxwell
lied during her unsuccessful bail appli-
cation when she claimed not to have
had any contact with Epstein for more
than a decade.
In an email exchange between the
pair in January 2015, after she was sued
by Ms Giuffre, he told her she had “done
nothing wrong” and to “start acting
like it”. He urged her to go to parties
with her “head high” and “not as an
escaping convict”, adding: “i had lisa
svenson the swedish ocean ambas-
sador yesteady [sic] she said no one
on her ocean panel takes this stuff
seriously and you would be [wel-
come] to the ocean conference
water conference etc.” He appeared to
be referring to Lisa Svensson, who was
Sweden’s ambassador for the ocean and
later global director for oceans for the
United Nations.
Epstein made the suggestion after
Ms Maxwell wrote to him: “I would
appreciate it if shelley would come out
and say she was your g’friend — I think
she was from end 99 to 2002.”
Mr Epstein replied: “ok, with me.”
It is not clear who “Shelley” is.
After Ms Maxwell was arrested, her
lawyers said prosecutors were
“wrongly trying to substitute her for
Epstein — even though she’d had no
contact with Epstein for more than a
decade”. In the emails disclosed yester-
day, Epstein seems to have drafted a
statement Ms Maxwell could use in re-
sponse to those who tried to associate
her with him. “I have never been a
party in any criminal action pertain-
ing to JE... at the time of Jeffrey’s plea
I was in a very long-term committedrelationship with another man and no
longer working with Jeffrey. Whilst I re-
mained on friendly terms with him up
until his plea, I have had limited contact
since.”
It argues that she was the victim of
“innuendo and comment” taken from
“civil depositions against JE, which
were settled many years ago”.
At some point the author switches
from “I” to “you” as he notes that the
plea deal and non-prosecution agree-
ment he agreed in 2008 did not men-
tion Ms Maxwell. “I have never even
seen the proceedings nor any of the
depositions.”
Epstein killed himself in a New York
jail last August while awaiting trial on
sex-trafficking charges. He was 66.
Confidential depositions from Ms
Maxwell and a man referred to in the
documents as John Doe #1 were due to
be unsealed on Monday. Last night an
appeals court halted their release
pending a hearing on September 22.Prince Andrew denies lobbying
to secure plea deal for Epstein
Will Pavia New York Ben Ellery
Isis pair face
trial in US as
death penalty
threat lifted
David Charter WashingtonProsecutors in the US are willing to
drop their insistence on the death pen-
alty for two Islamic State members
from London who were part of a gang
known as the Beatles, in a break-
through that could lead to them finally
facing trial.
William Barr, the US attorney-
general, made the concession to facili-
tate the transfer of evidence from Brit-
ain to put El Shafee Elsheikh and Alex-
anda Kotey on trial in America.
The pair, who were detained in Syria
in 2018 and held in Iraq by US forces,
have been stripped of their British citi-
zenship.
Kotey, 36, and Elsheikh, 31, who grew
up in west London, are accused of in-
volvement in the murders of 27 people,
including the British aid workers David
Haines and Alan Henning, and four
Americans.
Mr Barr is said to have shifted the US
position under pressure from the Pen-
tagon to get the pair out of US military
custody. FBI agents have travelled to
London and a federal prosecutor has
gone to Iraq to gather evidence.
“This was the first breakthrough in along time,” an official told The Washing-
ton Post. “The sense was, ‘We’re going
to get this done. We’re going to get the
diplomatic piece moving.’ ”
The US had long maintained that it
was Britain’s responsibility to prosecute
the pair but American prosecutors now
believe they can bring a case. They
want evidence obtained by British
investigators, including voice analysis
allegedly linking the two men to vari-
ous hostages. The UK is also said to
have evidence showing that the pair
were “hardcore” jihadists.
In 2018 Sajid Javid, who was home
secretary, decided to send the evidence
without a “death penalty assurance”,
but Elsheikh’s mother brought a court
case and the Supreme Court found that
the Home Office had acted out of
“political expediency” without follow-
ing privacy laws.
The families of four US hostages
murdered by Isis have opposed the
death penalty.Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh
were captured in Syria two years agoDAVIDOFF STUDIOS/GETTY IMAGESGhislaine Maxwell denies grooming
minors for Jeffrey Epstein, and the
Duke of York has denied wrongdoing