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Cowell ‘helped hide my husband’s cash’ says wife
Woman ignores divorce court judge’s warning to be careful what she says about Simon Cowell and Philip Green
Television impresario Simon Cowell has threatened to put his lawyers onto a woman who claimed in a London court yesterday that he and two other tycoons had helped her husband hide his assets to help reduce the size of his divorce settlement.
Michelle Young claimed Cowell along with Topshop owner Sir Philip Green and restaurant owner Richard Caring had conspired with her husband, Scot Young, to hide assets. She later added the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky to the list of co-conspirators.
Forty-seven-year-old Michelle Young is seeking £200m from her husband, from whom she separated in 2006.
Scot Young claims he cannot afford that. He says his property empire collapsed in the recent economic meltdown and that he is so broke he is relying on friends for handouts and to pay the rent on his flat.
But his estranged wife says he's hiding as much as £2 billion of his real wealth. She told the court he still eats at London's most expensive restaurants and drives a Ferrari.
She claimed her husband's assets had been hidden with the help of his friends in offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Switzerland, the Bahamas and France.
She also claimed that he had a secret shareholding in Simon Cowell¹s TV business.
Mr Justice Mostyn warned her: "You have to be careful when you make allegations that well-known people have been involved in criminal conspiracy. Do you understand?"
Michelle Young responded: "Absolutely, my lord."
Asked whether she was suggesting those named were intending "to pervert and defeat the course of justice", she replied: "Yes."
Her husband claimed she was fantasising. He said he had met Simon Cowell fewer than five times and had "never had any business with him". As for Sir Philip Green, he had "probably bumped into [him] in the street once and seen him outside a nightclub once" in the last two years.
After the hearing, spokesmen for Cowell and Green both dismissed the allegations. Cowell said his lawyers would be contacting Michelle Young.
The case continues. ·
