Brit claiming to be 18-year army veteran facing life in prison ‘for kidnapping millionaire hotel and casino owner’
AN Englishman who claims to be a decorated war hero is facing life imprisonment in France if he is found guilty of kidnapping a multi-millionaire hotel and restaurant owner.
Philip Dutton, 47, is said to have been involved in a well-organised plot to extort Jacqueline Veyrac’s fortune.
The 76-year-old magnate was bundled into a van on October 24th in the glamorous Riviera resort of Cannes, where she owns the fabled Grand Hotel.
Two days later, Mrs Veyrac was spotted bound and gagged in the back of the same vehicle, and then released.
Her family did not pay a ransom, but police found a note demanding the equivalent of millions of pounds, said the Nice public prosecutor, Jean-Michel Pretre.
Six alleged kidnappers have since been arrested, with Dutton among those facing charges of ‘kidnapping and sequestration in an organised group’, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
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His lawyer Benjamin Charlier told Nice Matin newspaper that the Liverpool-born Dutton claimed to be a British Army veteran who served for 18 years in numerous theatres of war including Afghanistan and Iraq.
While in Kabul, the Afghan capital, in 2011, Dutton’s car rolled over ‘A German mine left over from the Second War,’ he told his lawyer.
Dutton said he suffered second and third degree burns over 33 per cent of his body, and spent three years in military hospitals.
The accident marked the end of Dutton’s career, and his marriage to a Bulgarian national fell apart.
When she returned to Sofia, with their young daughter, Dutton became more impoverished and moved to the south of France.
There he initially found work as a beach security guard in Nice, sleeping rough so as to cut down on expenses.
In 2014 he was given a room in a house belonging to a friend called Luc Goursolas, a paparazzi photographer known by the nickname Tintin, who is now a co-accused.
Both men were close to the alleged ringleader of the kidnapping, an Italian called Giuseppe Serena.
Mr Serena started managing La Réserve, Mrs Veyrac’s art deco restaurant on the Nice seafront in 2007, but it went bankrupt two years later.
Then, in a legal case that is still ongoing, Mr Serena tried to recover £1 million from Mrs Veyrac.
The alleged plan to collect a ransom from Mrs Veyrac's family went wrong when the passerby in Cannes called the police because the van in which Mrs Veyrac was being held appeared to have a fake number plate.
Mrs Veyrac was the target of a previous kidnap attempt three years ago, and detectives are investigating a possible link between the latest one.
Mr Charlier said his client has ‘partially admitted’ his involvement in the kidnapping of Mrs Veyrac, but solely organised cars and other equipment.
‘He cooperated with investigators and admitted his involvement,’ said Mr Charlier. ‘He was the logistics foreman, but not an abductor or recruiter.’
Mr Charlier said none of Dutton’s claims about being a war hero had been confirmed with the British authorities, but ‘his injuries, his mission, his attitude are all consistent’ with his claims.
Judicial police in Nice said Dutton was arrested at Tintin’s home in Nice on October 26th.
He is the only member of the gang who did not speak French and – intriguingly – a mysterious middleman with an English accent phoned the Veyrac family on the day of the kidnapping. He told them: ‘You have problems, you’ll have to pay.’
A judicial police spokesman said Dutton remained in custody, and that ‘the enquiry is ongoing’