By Sheila Mckenzie
Multi millionaire hedge funder, Crispin Odey admitted wanting sex with a woman seeking career elevation, but told a court he did not grope her.
Odey took the witness stand this morning at Westminster Magistrate Court to give his version of events in a case that could land him in jail if he is found guilty.
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Defending his innocence plea against an alleged indecent assault that took place in 1998, he told the court the allegation against him by the woman, whose identity cannot be revealed for legal reasons, was massively exaggerated.
The married multi-millionaire worth an estimated £800 million, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, was briefly married to media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s eldest daughter Prudence in the mid-1980s.
Last November, he stepped down as chief executive of Odey Asset Management, the company he founded in 1991, saying he would focus on managing his own funds.
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Odey, who was 39 at the time, while the woman was in her mid-20s, is alleged to have put his hand down her shirt to touch her breast and to have put his hand up her skirt.
Giving evidence in his defence on Thursday, he said he propositioned the woman at a meeting – after she inquired where “this is going to end” – by replying: “If you’re lucky, it might end up in the bed.”
Grope
Last month a court heard Odey “lunged” at a junior woman in banking and groped her breast.
Odey, 62 and founder of Odey Asset Management, has persistently denied the assault charge, insisting he merely propositioned the woman.
At the time of the alleged assault the woman attended a client meeting with Odey in Mayfair, and was invited to return later to meet privately with Odey.
Odey said he had invited the young woman to his home for dinner the day after meeting her at a business meeting and that when she arrived at Odey’s home, the pair sat separately in Odey’s television room in Chelsea, chit-chatted and ordered a Chinese takeaway.
When the pair sat together in the television room, Odey said the young woman asked Odey why he was being “so nice to her” and “where do you think this is all going to end?”
The hedge fund manager then said he was “ashamed” to admit he said he hoped it would end in bed.
At that point, said Odey, the young woman became angry and walked downstairs to leave: “I totally misunderstood her question, she got up, and I tried to apologise, and she walked in silence downstairs to the door,” he said.
Odey said he remembered the events that took place that evening because of how angry the young woman became and that she left before dinner. He said the young woman “couldn’t have been in the house for more than an hour and a half”.
Intimacy
On the witness stand the hedge fund mogul admitted to his lawyer, Crispin Aylett QC, that intimacy with the young woman “might’ve been in the back of my mind, but not at the front of my mind.”
He also today admitted he found the young woman “attractive and intelligent” and said that had she reacted differently to his proposal, things could have become intimate that night, or at some point in the future, a fact Odey said has put strain on his marriage.
Prosecuting the millionaire, Kerry Broome, told the court the young woman, aged 26 at the time, went to Odey’s offices, where he, at the time 39, suggested they go to a nearby pub. The pub was crowded, and so Odey proposed going to his house in Chelsea, where they went together in a taxi.
The woman had hoped going to his address “would further her career”, the court heard.
She argued that at Odey’s house the hedge fund manager said he was going to change, and returned shortly afterwards, having showered. The court heard the woman was sitting in a booth-type seat by a table in the kitchen, and he sat beside her, effectively blocking her in.
Physical Contact
Broome told the court: “He lunged at her and put his hand on her breast down her shirt. His other hand was on her back then he put a hand up her skirt. This is the physical contact the Crown says constituted an assault.”
The court heard the woman struggled away from Odey and managed to get outside the house. She then caught a passing taxi and went to her then boyfriend’s home.
Asked if he would have “taken the opportunity” to sleep with her that night, Odey replied: “I might have… I don’t know, it didn’t happen.”
Prosecutor Kerry Broome said: “You have to say today that it (the meeting) was a social event, and she knew it was a social event, because otherwise the truth is – and it’s obvious, is it not – that you used your position as subterfuge to get her into an isolated and vulnerable position, and you did it, and while she was there you indecently assaulted her.
“That’s the truth of it, isn’t it?”
Odey replied: “No, it’s not.”
The prosecutor said: “You may regret it now. But in 1998 you took your chances with her because you knew she wouldn’t be believed.”
Odey said he received an email from her in 2013 accusing him of groping her, which he described as “nothing like my own recollection of the evening”.
He told the court he responded, seeking to “conciliate her”.
He said: “It was something I didn’t want to come out. It was deeply embarrassing.”
Odey said he only told his wife, Nichola Pease, who is also a hedge fund manager and has supported him throughout the trial, about the incident in 2017 after the alleged victim went to police amid the #MeToo movement.
He described the allegation to defence counsel Crispin Aylett QC as ”a horrible thing, a horrible slur.”
Odey said he invited the woman around because he thought “she could become a friend”.
Ms Broome said: “If you thought she could become a friend, when she said, ‘Where do you see this going?’, why didn’t you say ‘Friendship’?”
Odey replied: “I got the wrong end of the stick.”
District Judge Nicholas Rimmer has retired to consider the verdict.
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