It’s the stuff of crime novels – multi million pound property deals, the occult, exotic royal families, secret fathers – all woven into a mendacious plot that centres around one mysterious woman, 28-year-old Sara Al-Amoudi.
Reported by the Daily Mail newspaper, Miss Al-Amoudi claimed to be a Saudi princess so as to secure loans to buy a series of top London addresses, including apartments in Knightsbridge and Chelsea.
The veiled Muslim has been said to lead a fabulously wealthy lifestyle, to have dated Colin Farrell and to count Kate Moss amongst her friends.
But she’s now been ordered by a judge to pay back £12.5 million after an investor named Amanda Clutterbuck claimed she obtained over £5.5 million from her company through unauthorised money transfers.
Miss Al-Amoudi’s extensive portfolio boasts 13 exclusive London apartments, including one behind Harrods bought for £2 million in 2008, a country house in West Sussex, near Roman Abramovich’s £18 million estate, and a large property in Cornwall.
According to evidence given by Ms Clutterbuck, the so-called princess befriended her former business associate, property developer Elliot Nichol, in 2002 – seven years before he died of alcohol poisoning.
Ms Clutterbuck claims Mr Nichol was teetotal when she first met him and that during the course of his friendship with Miss Al-Amoudi he began drinking and became obsessed with the occult.
According to the investor, both he and Miss Al-Amoudi had mobile phone numbers whose digits ended 666 666 which they used to communicate with their ‘inner circles’.
In her statement made to the police she stated that in 2006 Miss Al-Amoudi and three other women, said to be her sisters, were living with the property tycoon in his flats in central London. She said she received a phone call from him at Christmas time in 2007 where, slurring incoherently, he sang: “I am drowning in Vuitton handbags and Cavalli, we’re thinking of floating them down the Thames.”
Mystery shrouds the friendship as Mr Nichol had previously separated from his wife and few people seem to know who exactly Miss Al-Amoudi is. She claimed at one point to be the daughter of Saudi-Ethiopian businessman Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi and obtained money from Ms Clutterbuck’s company by saying she had millions in banks in Dubai. But a spokesperson for the billionaire denied this and Ms Clutterbuck questions her claims too, saying: “She later claimed she put £10 million back into a joint venture, but there’s no evidence of it.”
Defending Miss Al-Amoudi, Andrew Quirk said: “My client met Mr Nicohol briefly through a prior mutual friend. They weren’t friends, there were no loans form Mr Nichol as claimed.
“This claim that the client has taken £5.5 million is completely untrue. The allegations are being vigorously denied and are nonsense.”
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