A BBC reporter has spoken out about her shock after being named in court papers as the true target of the hitman who murdered Jill Dando.
Gérald Marie, 72, of France, is said to have used the Russian Mafia to try to kill Lisa Brinkworth, now 55, after she exposed him as a sex abuser.
According to extraordinary allegations contained in legal papers filed in Paris, their gunman may have mistakenly assassinated TV presenter Ms Dando.
They are part of an investigation into multiple rape allegations made against Marie, the ex-husband of supermodel Linda Evangelista. He calls the allegations “fanciful nonsense.”
Ms Dando was 37 when she was shot dead outside her home in Fulham, south west London, in a 23-year-old cold case.
Ms Brinkworth now claims that Marie, the former Elite agency’s boss, wanted her dead because she accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1998 while she was working undercover to expose crimes in the fashion industry.
She told the Mirror: ‘Even if there was a tiny possibility, I don’t know if I could live with that, so I’m hoping there’s nothing in that. I try not to think about it. I really, really don’t want it to be true.’
Ms Brinkworth’s lawyers mention an alleged conversation witnessed by a former Elite executive in which Marie discussed hiring the Russian mafia to ‘deal with a problem.’
‘Shortly after, in April 1999, Jill Dando, another BBC journalist, was shot dead,’ the papers said.
At the time, France’s statute of legal limitations for prosecutions stated that sexual assaults had to be reported within three years, and rapes had to be reported within ten years.
As a result, Marie claims that the links to the Dando case were fabricated in order to remove the statute of limitations.
One of Marie’s legal team said on Monday: ‘It’s fanciful nonsense aimed at suggesting that Lisa Brinkworth was in fear of her life, and so was too scared to report the alleged attack within a reasonable time limit.
‘In fact, Lisa Brinkworth made no effort to report any kind of sexual abuse at the time, and only started to take action decades later.’
Ms Brinkworth claims she was kept in a safe house following the broadcasting of her exposé on the BBC’s MacIntyre Investigates programme, presented by veteran journalist Donal MacIntyre.
Ms Brinkworth also claims that the BBC did not want her taking legal action, according to the legal papers.
They say that Omar Harfouch, who is now 53 and a Lebanese businessman and politician, was with senior Elite management at a Paris restaurant in 1999, when they discussed the MacIntytre programme.
‘We’re in the s**T,’ Marie is said to have told the others, after ‘learning that a BBC report about Donal MacIntyre and Lisa Brinkworth going undercover for six months at Elite will soon broadcast.’
Ms Brinkworth, then 31, had pretended to be a fashion model, and Gerald Marie said: ‘I got tricked’.
He then described Ms Brinkworth as a ‘huge problem’, to which Vitali Leiba, an Elite agent based in Moscow and allegedly with strong links to the Russian Mafia replied: ‘Consider it done’.
Mr Harfouch claims this was an oblique reference to ‘making [Brinkworth] disappear,’ according to the legal papers.
The Harfouch testimony is now being used by lawyers for 15 plaintiffs – including Ms Brinkworth – to try and get the statute of limitations thrown out.
In a file sent to Paris prosecutors, William Bourdon, Amélie Lefebvre and Anne-Claire Lejeune refer to ‘the fear of physical reprisals, going as far as a contract killing, preventing a filing of a complaint within the required time frame by Lisa Brinkworth, who accuses Gerald Marie of sexual assault in the context of her report.’
The lawyers’ report adds: ‘They are therefore requesting, in an unprecedented approach, an extension of the limitation period, paving the way for a future trial.’
Paris prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation into Marie in September 2020, after he was accused of rape and sexual assault by the 15 women.
However, all of the alleged facts took place in the 1980s and 1990s, making them time barred as far as prosecutions are concerned.
No charges have been brought, and Marie remains a free man.
The BBC aired the MacIntrye programme in November 1999, and it alleged that Ms Brinkworth was attacked in a nightclub in Milan, Italy, in October 1998.
In her complaint finally filed to the French legal authorities on September 20, 2020, Ms Brinkworth describes an ‘obscene atmosphere’ created by Marie, who allegedly asked her to ‘perform oral sex’ on Elite executive and to ‘let me fuck you’ for money. (500 euros is mentioned in the legal papers, although France did not start using euros until 2002)
Ms Brinkworth was told: ‘No one refuses the president of Elite and it’s an honour to sleep with this man,’ according to the legal papers.
Marie allegedly ‘rode her while she was sitting on a chair,’ and ‘she was terrified of being raped when he started pushing his penis into her lower abdomen,’ according to Ms Brinkworth.
At the time, other Elite executives were said to be ‘laughing and applauding.’
Ms Brinkworth is seen on video telling Mr MacIntyre about what happened immediately following the incident.
Elite sued the BBC over the allegations, and as part of a confidentiality agreement, the Corporation agreed in 2001 not to rebroadcast the program.
Ms Brinkworth was not a party to that agreement, so Elite put pressure on her to remain silent, according to the most recent legal documents.
She claims the BBC protected her for three years, from 1999 to 2001, and placed her in three safe houses, at least one of which was surrounded by electric fences.
Ms Brinkworth met Omar Harfouch, who made a multi-million pound fortune in Ukraine following the fall of the Soviet Union, during a meeting with the other plaintiffs in the Paris Senate in September 2021.
Mr Harfoch claimed that his support for former Elite models who claimed they were sexually abused made him a “target for death threats.”
Ms Brinkworth is described in court documents as “blonde, of similar height and build as Jill Dando.”
They claim Ms Brinkworth and Ms Dando were Fulham neighbors, and Ms Dando’s partner, Alan Farthing, was Ms Brinkworth’s doctor.
Ms Brinkworth’s lawyers now claim that the parallels created a “climate of fear” for their clients, and that “she was convinced that her silence ensured her life.”
All of this made it impossible for Ms Brinkworth to file a sexual assault complaint against Maire within the three-year time limit.
Gérald Marie’s lawyer, Céline Bekerman, said the attempt to repeal the statute of limitations had no chance of success because it was “based on fanciful arguments.”
Ms Bekerman stated that Ms Brinkworth “was never a party to the agreement concluded between Elite and the BBC,” and thus there was nothing to prevent her from complaining about sexual assault in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Mr Harfouch’s testimony about the Paris restaurant conversation, according to Ms Bekerman, was not considered reliable.
Marie, according to her, denies any wrongdoing and “refuses to be the scapegoat for a system and an era.”
Ms Bekerman claimed that a diary kept by Donal MacIntyre during the undercover operation made no mention of a sexual assault.
The investigation into Gerald Marie is still ongoing, according to a spokesman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, and no one has been arrested or charged.