A younger funding banker has instructed a court docket that multi millionaire hedge fund supervisor Crispin Odey subjected her to “an octopus expertise”.
Crispin Odey is on trial at Hendon Magistrates’ Court docket, the place he denies indecently assaulting the lady at his dwelling in Chelsea, west London.
The court docket has heard that she was a junior worker at a widely known funding financial institution of which he was a consumer on the time of the alleged sexual assault.
The court docket was instructed the alleged sufferer had wrongly assumed Odey’s spouse could be dwelling when he invited her again to his home following a piece assembly at his workplace in Grosvenor Sq..
However she says he ordered a Chinese language takeaway, then showered and altered out of his go well with right into a gown earlier than placing his hand down her shirt to the touch her breast and attain up her skirt.
Married Odey, who has a house within the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire admits he propositioned the lady however denies any bodily contact.
Below cross-examination by Crispin Aylett QC, defending, the complainant mentioned: “He was subsequent to me. It was form of like an octopussy-type manoeuvre.
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“The very first thing I bear in mind was truly on my again. Then, it was like a scramble of palms, it was like a groping occasion, is the one approach to describe it.
“I referred to it like an octopus expertise, this bodily engagement. I don’t bear in mind the precise choreography.”
Mr Aylett mentioned: “Or is it the case this didn’t occur in any respect and that’s why you may’t bear in mind the choreography?”
The lady replied: “Effectively we disagree on that.”
She additionally disagreed when the barrister mentioned: “I’m suggesting to you that Crispin Odey didn’t contact you in any method in any respect in a sexual sense inside the home at Swan Stroll.”
One other colleague mentioned to have been on the assembly mentioned he had “no recollection” however added that Odey, with whom he nonetheless has knowledgeable relationship, is “nothing however an entire gentleman”.
“He’s a really open particular person. Controversial however actually trustworthy and honourable,” he mentioned.
Odey, who based Odey Asset Administration in 1991, was interviewed by police in March 2019, and strenuously denied indecent assault.
In a transcript learn to the court docket, he mentioned: “She left as a result of I made a lewd suggestion…I in all probability misinterpret the alerts. I supplied her a drink and I poured her some wine.
“She mentioned, the place do you assume that is all going to steer? I mentioned, that is all going to mattress. She was clearly appalled…she mentioned, I’m stunned, and he or she left.”
The lady will need to have developed a “bitter hatred” of him, Odey mentioned.
Mr Aylett didn’t have the case dismissed and the listening to was adjourned till March 11.
