The British caretaker taking on a Saudi prince

Telegraph

a day ago

A Saudi prince has been ordered to pay the British caretaker of his palatial Paris home €200,000 (£170,000).
The company handling Prince Fahd bin Sultan al-Saud's French affairs failed to pay Mark James's wages for months, The Telegraph has learnt.
Mr James, 45, from Hitchin, Herts, has still not been paid 'a centime', despite the ruling by the Paris workers' tribunal in April, according to his lawyers.
The hearing in the French capital is one among a raft of creditors' attempts to recover funds from Prince Fahd.
Several of his multimillion-pound assets in Paris, London and Megève, the upmarket French Alpine ski resort, have been seized, along with a luxury yacht.
The 74 year-old is the son of Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the late crown prince of Saudi Arabia. He was the Saudi defence minister from 1962 to 2011 and is currently the governor of Tabuk province.
Raymond Rudio, Mr James's lawyer, said the prince appeared to be the latest royal to fall foul of the 'squeeze' by Mohammed bin Salman.
The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, known as MBS, has cut funding to his sprawling family – a purge that started in 2017 and landed some of them in jail.
'I was told his lavish lifestyle had been considerably reduced after his cousin MBS cut funds,' Mr Rudio said.
Mr James, who is now based in Antibes on the French Riviera, managed a three-storey mansion at 36 Cours Albert 1 in Paris's plush 8th arrondissement for the prince.
The property sits next to the Brazilian embassy, commands a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower and boasts a specially redesigned roof terrace and an underground swimming pool.
However, there is reportedly no hot water at the 637 sq metre (6,857 sq ft) property because the gas bills have not been paid, the lift no longer works and the swimming pool is unusable due to a faulty pump. It is thought the property will soon be up for auction.
Credit Suisse, Prince Fahd's main creditor, seized his chalet in Megève in the French Alps in 2023.
In a separate London court hearing the previous year, the bank argued the prince had failed to repay around $78 million (£57 million) in interest and loans he took out to refinance Sarafsa, a 269ft British-made yacht, which locals claimed had been 'left to rot' in the Mediterranean off Monaco.
With an asking price of £65 million, the six-decker yacht was sold in 2023. It houses two massive formal dining salons, a large swimming pool and beauty salon, a wellness area with a jacuzzi, hamam, sauna and gym, a cinema and a touch-and-go helipad.
The bank also accused the prince of allegedly failing to pay part of the loan, plus interest, for a mansion property estate outside London with a golf course, estimated at $47 million (£34 million). He was the guarantor for the loans that two companies took out and the beneficiary of the assets.
In April, local police reportedly seized the British property's furniture, according to Paris personnel, who claimed that several people working for the prince in the UK had also not been paid.
In April, the Paris tribunal ordered the prince via a company called Sofici, which belongs to the royal via offshore companies, to give Mr James €200,000 (£171,000) in pay and damages for his 'dismissal without real or serious cause'.
A previous ruling ordering the company to pay an initial instalment of €70,000 (£60,000) had no effect, despite a penalty of €1,000 (£850) per day of delay.
The court quashed claims by the prince's lawyer that the prince had no 'contractual relationship' with the unpaid domestic staff and was merely the 'exclusive tenant' of the Paris mansion.
But Mr James says he has still not received the money and his lawyer said bailiffs had failed to seize funds from any accounts belonging to Sofici as they are said to be empty.
'They believed his promises'
In May, the property's butler and maitre d'hotel also took the prince to the industrial tribunal for failing to pay them or provide payslips for over a year.
On the eve of the May 21 hearing, the prince finally paid the sums owed, respectively €58,000 (£50,000) and €82,000 (£70,000).
'They are sad not to continue working for the prince. They waited a very long time before filing a complaint because they believed his promises that he would pay up,' said Mr Rudio.
The prince failed to provide payslips, meaning the butler and maitre'd could not claim any social security or pension. The tribunal ordered him to do so.
In the absence of a contract, the staff members are still employees of the prince and can thus continue to claim wages, said Mr Rudio.
He argued that the tribunal and URSSAF, France's main body responsible for collecting social security contributions in France agency had been too soft on the prince.
'Any local garage owner would be prosecuted immediately. Prince Fahd appears to have been given preferential treatment,' he said.
Prince Fahd is by no means the only Saudi royal chased by creditors.
In January, a property owned by the family of his brother Khaled bin Sultan al-Saud was sold to a mystery buyer for £139 million after creditors demanded repayment of a loan for a private jet.
Dubbed 'Little Buckingham Palace', the Holme, which sits alone in four private acres of Regents Park in Central London, went for just over half its asking price of £250 million, which would have made it Britain's most expensive home.
The lawns of the 40-bedroom house sweep down to the park's boating lake and the 200-year-old home has been described as the 'definition of Western civilisation' by one architectural critic. It was put on the market in 2023.
Prince Khaled also sold his £70 million home in Paris, according to The Wall Street Journal, and is thought to have sold two expensive yachts.
'All these princes were used to millions, now they have to make do with hundreds of thousands,' one 'intermediary' told Libérarion newspaper.
MBS has made purges of his many cousins a hallmark of his rise to power, beginning with his removal of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, known as MBN, whom he replaced as crown prince in 2017.
MBN has since been arrested, while scores of other princes have been seized and forced into making financial settlements with the government over corruption charges.
There are said to be at least 10,000 members of the Saudi Arabian royal family.
Others are alleged to have been forced to come back to Saudi Arabia against their will and in hazy circumstances before disappearing into the prison system.
This week, Mr James's lawyer said Sofici, Prince Fahd's company, notified him it intended to challenge the ruling at the Paris appeals court. Sofici's law firm, LX Paris Versailles Reims, declined to comment.