Richard Desmond
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Richard Clive Desmond (born 8 December 1951) is a British publisher, current owner of Express Newspapers and founder of Northern and Shell plc. Express Newspapers publishes the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Star on Sunday and Daily Star. Northern and Shell was notorious for publishing dozens of pornographic titles, such as Big Ones, Skinny and Wriggly, Forum, Posh Housewives and Asian Babes, prior to their sale to Remnant Media in 2004. Despite selling his magazines, he us still the owner of the most popular pornographic television channels in the UK, the Fantasy Channel and Red Hot TV.
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[edit] Personal life
From a Jewish background, Desmond grew up in north London and left school at 14. His first job was for Thomson Newspapers, working in classified advertisements. He moved on to another company and by the age of 21 owned two record shops. He acquired an interest in publishing and in 1974 published a magazine called International Musician.
Desmond currently lives in north London.
[edit] Publishing career
In 1983 he published a British version of the American pornographic magazine Penthouse. Northern & Shell was the first company to move to the revamped Docklands and the Princess Royal opened the offices. When the company moved to the Northern & Shell Tower Prince Philip did the honours. Desmond's biggest publishing deal was the launch of celebrity magazine OK! in 1993.
Desmond attracted controversy over his £100,000 donation to the Labour Party.[1] Several prominent Labour members, including Clare Short, broke ranks to question whether the party should be accepting money from a publisher of pornographic magazines.[2]
After buying Express Newspapers in 2000 for £125m,[3] Desmond became embroiled in a bitter feud with Viscount Rothermere, publisher of the Daily Express rival, the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail ran several articles describing Desmond as a pornographer and Private Eye christened him "Dirty Desmond".
In April 2004, the Daily Express shifted its support from Labour to the Conservatives. On the same day Desmond caused a scandal by accusing the Daily Telegraph, which was then considering accepting a takeover offer by the German Axel Springer group, of giving in to Nazis.[4] Desmond allegedly harangued The Daily Telegraph's chief executive and associates in faux German at a business meeting and imitated Adolf Hitler, before erupting in a tirade of four-letter words.[4]
[edit] Controversy
Desmond became caught up in a pornographic telephone and internet scam which ended with him receiving death threats from the mafia, according to documents emerging from a racketeering court case in New York. Court papers suggest that a deal, whereby companies which later turned out to be mafia-linked, placed advertisements in Desmond's top-shelf magazines in Britain went so badly wrong that a "soldier" from the Gambino crime family flew to London to issue a warning to Mr Desmond - only to be told by the publisher that he was "stupid" and "common".[5]
The documents allege that soon after the meeting, according to the FBI's sources, a senior executive at Mr Desmond's publishing group, Northern and Shell, was pistol-whipped and had a Taser-style gun applied to his testicles while on trip to New York.[5]
Earlier this week the mafia emissary, Richard Martino, 45, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud in a scam which is claimed to have netted the mafia $650m (£350m). He also admitted to conspiring to extort money from Mr Desmond and Northern and Shell.
There is no suggestion Desmond was involved in the scam.
Martino has been linked in court with the Gambino gang, formerly headed by the late John Gotti, who reputedly said of Martino: "I like Ricci the kid ... I like guys who do more than kill."
Desmond has consistently denied the stories, which first began to circulate when the publisher acquired the Express titles five years ago. He claims he has been unfairly maligned.
The documents form part of an investigation into a wide-ranging telephone and internet sex scam allegedly perpetrated by Martino and a string of associates. Martino is alleged to have been inducted into the Gambino family in 1990 and served in the "crew" of Salvatore LoCascio, whose father was convicted of racketeering with Gotti in 1992.
Martino and others are alleged to have placed unauthorised charges on users' phone bills and credit cards in one of the biggest consumer frauds in American history. They allegedly cheated consumers out of up to $600,000 a day.
According to the charges read out in a Brooklyn court on Monday, the extortion count stemmed from a threat "to damage Richard Desmond's Northern and Shell business if Desmond or any Northern and Shell employees ever attempted again to do business in the United States".
The story behind that threat is detailed in an affidavit from an FBI agent, Beth Ambinder, who has been investigating the Gambino family for six years, filed in support of Martino's arrest warrant.
The affidavit cites a "confidential source" - described as the former managing director of Desmond's Northern and Shell. Earlier press reports have identified the source as Philip Bailey.
The document claims that Desmond's company cut a deal with a New York advertising agency called Harvest to carry advertising for Martino's adult chat lines. Desmond's former adult magazine business, on which he built his fortune, included such titles as Asian Babes, Big Ones, Eros, Forum, Horny Housewives, Only 18 and Mothers-in-Law.
According to a second FBI informant, identified as the former manager of Harvest, he and Martino had become increasingly angry about the deal and had confronted Mr Desmond in London in September 1992.
According to the Harvest boss, the meeting "got ugly" and Desmond accused Martino of being stupid and common. Martino allegedly warned him to never to attempt to do business in the US again. Desmond has denied the meeting took place.
According to the affidavit, two weeks after the London meeting the Harvest boss learned that Desmond was planning to send his deputy to New York and informed Martino. Martino then apparently stated that he intended to "send a car" for the Northern and Shell manager and that he intended to send "a message" to Mr Desmond.
The FBI's Northern and Shell source - Mr Bailey - said he travelled to New York for a week in October 1992, at Mr Desmond's direction, in order to find new business opportunities for the company.
On the night before he was due to return to London, he claims to have received a call in his hotel room from a woman claiming to be a representative of one of the distribution companies he had met. She said the company would send a courtesy car to take him to the airport the next day.
The following morning he was met by a man who claimed to be the driver. After two blocks, however, the car stopped. Two men allegedly got in the car, one with a gun. He claims they pistol-whipped him, slashed his face with a knife and applied a Taser-style stun gun to his testicles.
He claims they said: "We're here because of your ****ing boss. If your boss sets foot here; he's a dead man. A ****ing dead man." According to the informant, the driver then said to him: "We're gonna let you go. Do you know how ****ing lucky you are? Tell your boss; you're the message." The three men then dumped him on the street and left.
Desmond has described the account as "pure fantasy".
At the time of the alleged extortion attempt by Martino, Desmond's publishing business had earned him millions of pounds but little respectability. He started in magazine publishing with International Musician in 1974 but made his fortune in the 1980s by taking on the UK franchise of Penthouse. He was soon to enter the mainstream with the launch of the celebrity title, OK!
The cashflow and profits generated by OK!, the top-shelf magazines and an adult pay-TV business convinced City financiers to back Mr Desmond's £125m bid for Express Newspapers in 2000.
The Express deal brought him access to the establishment but drew public criticism from female members of the Labour cabinet, including the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell. Desmond also contributed £100,000 to the party's 2001 election campaign.
Martino and his brother, Daniel Martino, were indicted last month in Kansas City.
The phone scam that Martino pleaded guilty to allegedly took place between 1996 and 2002. Martino and employees of Harvest are said to have offered free samples of adult entertainment services which actually triggered monthly charges to phone bills. The scheme was generating up to $600,000 a day, a total of more than $420m.
At the same time, Martino entered into a joint internet scam with Crescent, which published titles including Playgirl and Live Young Girls. The aim was to produce online versions of the magazines.
The charges allege that the sites offered "free tours". Visitors would be asked to provide credit or debit card details as "proof of age" with the promise they would not be billed. In fact, they did charge, prosecutors allege, a monthly recurring rate of up to $90. The scam brought in more than $230m.
According to the witness statement provided by the Crescent boss, he was fired in 2001 and then paid $890,000 in what he believed to be "hush money".
Martino is alleged to have funnelled $40m into a company controlled by LoCascio, his mob boss. LoCascio has admitted money laundering, one of the six to plead guilty on Monday. The six face sentences ranging from less than two years to 10 years in prison and will forfeit millions of dollars from the scheme. Martino will forfeit $15m.
The US attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said the guilty pleas ensured that "the perpetrators of one of the largest consumer frauds in history will serve significant time in prison, but they will also forfeit the spoils of their crimes, including luxury homes and other significant assets, which will be used to compensate the victims of their crimes".
A Northern and Shell spokesman said Desmond had never met Martino or "knowingly had dealings with him". "Northern and Shell has not had any business dealings with any unscrupulous sections of society."
The spokesman did confirm that Northern and Shell's US business sold advertising space to Harvest. He added that Desmond was unaware of an extortion attempt against Northern and Shell "apart from what Philip Bailey told him".
"We believe that the comments made by Philip Bailey are a fantasy and we never knowingly had anything other than legitimate dealings with businesses in our dealings as a publisher."
[edit] References
- ^ "Blair faces backlash over Desmond donation", BBC, May 13, 2002.
- ^ "Desmond donation wrong - minister", BBC, May 24, 2002.
- ^ Jorn Madslien. "Profile: Richard Desmond", BBC, February 12, 2006.
- ^ a b "Desmond taunts Telegraph in 'Nazi' tirade", Media Guardian, Guardian, April 22, 2004.
- ^ a b "Desmond's New York venture", The Observer, Guardian Newspapers, May 20, 2001.
