Episode Five: The Windfall

People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Little Richard.

“And we pull apart the story behind the image.”

And we do this by digging through the BBC's vast archives. Discovering for going interviews that change exactly how we see these giants of our culture. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I'm a mental geochie. I'm Kai Wright.

And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives, wherever you get your podcasts. Fraudaceous is a novel production for BBC Studios.

Inside Harveenacles, one of London's most high end department stores.

The ground floor is where you find the beauty specialists. And all the latest trends. This is where you can try collagen boosting LED therapy. Or get your nails done with the glazed doughnut effect. It's mid-morning on the 30th of July 2024.

And Bridget is keeping things more simple. I browse eyelashes, you know, and don't I say it hares on the chin. After saying her hello's, she's directed to one of the reclining another chairs. She's lying back, almost horizontal with her eyes closed. I'm sitting there, getting ready, and I'm thinking, no that voice.

It's loud, and very distinctive, with a thick eastern European accent. The voice was ordering everybody around. You catarina Barrett. The woman who Bridget is due to facing court later this same day.

The woman who still owes Bridget, 1.6 million pounds.

I couldn't believe it. It was a light of all the places in the world.

“Why do you have to come in to have the same treatment done?”

In just three hours from now, your catarina will have to stand up in the courtroom and face the high court judge's verdict on whether or not she lied under oath. Bridget has compared a case. Your catarina could receive a jail sentence this afternoon. And then she came straight next to me.

Bridget is still leaning back in her chair. And the beautician is now hovering above her, preparing her eyebrows. Bridget can't probably see your catarina, but she can feel her. She's got hold of my hand, with the nails, sort of rubbed my hand. It was like having a little sparrow, and she said come with me, and she's like trying to hypnotize her.

Come with me, I just need to touch you for two minutes. This is what Bridget's friends have feared, that amid the extremely long and drawn out court proceedings, your catarina might somehow manage to get Bridget on her own, where she can reboot her charm offensive and try to gain some sort of advantage. It seems your catarina is making her move.

I'm Vicki Baker, and from novel and BBC Studios, this is Ford Asia's. Episode five, disorder in court. 62 million euros. That's the amount of money that Roger tells me your catarina has somehow been awarded through the courts before in a different case.

As Bridget's best friend, he's been helping her, sift through truth and lies to find out any clues about your catarina's real wealth. It seems to have become even murkier after your catarina's court appearance, when she implied she had no funds of her own. Now this feels like a bombshell. You're very welcome to see the judgement. She got that in the British High Court.

Roger shows me a document, a date-stamped judgement from the UK High Court, the 25th of February 2011. That's just six years before she came into Bridget's life. The enormous settlement sum is written in black and white to the bottom. 62 million.

“I can't get my head around this, is this really true?”

Does this mean she really does have a multimillion pound fortune? That's been our driving question from the start.

The bricks and mortar assets never mind the fur coats.

“We know that despite past brags, your catarina now claims that all her money comes from her family.”

It's a need to get to the truth that's driving me, but Bridget has a much more personal impetus. She needs to get to the bottom of this as she can try to work out how to get her money back. Roger is determined to do all he can to help. He wants to try to find out where he had gold buried so to speak. On the documents from 2011 that Roger is showing me,

I see the name of the defendant is Leo Lomart. He was a super wealthy, magnate, he trusted her, the big mistake. I know that Roger has spent time looking into this, but I don't see your catarina barrett's name on the paper.

The documents show the multi-million's being signed over from one Leo Lomart

to a company called Love Lays Group Incorporated. There is no indication of why or what for.

“There's just a line to say that Love Lays is a company registered in the British Virgin Islands.”

So how does she become Love Lays? She became a director of that company. This sounds like another very tangled web with a fake offshore company. She's very good at that maneuver, she worked around companies a lot. That was her sort of motor sapper end eye.

I feel like I might be getting into the nuts and bolts side of how your catarina operates. Something that runs in parallel with her financial interactions with individuals It makes me think back to the assets hearing in 2023. The one where your catarina was grilled on the witness stand about her finances and what she did or didn't own.

Your catarina was asked about her links to various companies. Their ownership and purpose remain unclear. She mostly denied connections to them, but the answer often became muddled. I really want to know how your catarina ended up entangled with Leo Lomart. So does Roger.

How she managed to get into Lamar, I don't know. Somehow she did and it's incredible that she comes out of jail in Austria but somehow comes across Lamar wherever I don't know where she met him. I know Roger is ahead of me in delving into this, but I need to do my own digging. Taking the documents of face value, they indicate that Leo Lomart had some sort of business relationship with your catarina,

which appears to have sowing and ended up with a court case. He seemingly didn't pay her what she claims she was owed. And then, your catarina won and potentially walked away with the rights to a fortune. I mean, it sounds incredible and I'm still unsure what to believe here. Unfortunately, I'm not going to get any answers from Leo Lomart himself.

The first thing that comes up on a search for him online is an obituary. He died in 2022. So where to start?

Over 30 years, I've never seen that. Never.

This is Bridget's lawyer again, Philip Barden. I'm in his office in the city of London, showing him the high court document to see if he can help me make any sense of it. It's the first time he's seen this paperwork and his trained eye is homing straight in on some details he finds astonishing. I have never seen anybody start a lip piece of litigation. By saying, "Yeah, absolutely I've met the eye, I'll pay it."

Why would Earth would you do that? He's looking at the tick box at the end of one of the pages where Leo Lomart agrees to pay the full amount. He owes somebody 62 million pounds and lets assume they issue proceedings against you. What are you going to do? You're going to defend the proceedings. You would want your lawyer to go into Bat for you and say, "Well, let's find out what they're prepared to accept.

You're going to argue hard and viciously and you're going to seek to settle the claim for 10 million or 20 million and save yourself 40 million." Philip also notices another detail. The amount of interest is really small, which suggests there's hardly any time span between the issue of the proceedings and the offer. Very, very small.

“If he agreed he owed her the money and agreed to pay her the money, why go to the court at all?”

Philip can't come in any further as he doesn't know the details of the case. He says there's also a possibility that the defendant Lomart had no assets or limited assets and so decided to give up and walk away. But it's very unusual he reiterates.

Oh yeah, why not by how are you? I've got a quick question for you. Just trying to track a judgment from 2011. The defendant is a Mr. Leo Cornelius. What's the sign? I'm asking because so far we've drawn a blank. We can't find it in the court's archives.

Philip's contact can't find it either. Is it real? Roger got this document from a trusted source so I know he's convinced.

“Could this document have been paraded around to give the illusion of a fortune?”

Or is there something in it? And who was Leo Lomart? After a bit more online digging, we come across a series of articles published in 2014. That's three years after Lomart's apparent court case with he catcherina. These are extremely enlightening. Here's an extract from detail a graph.

As the heir to Belgium's largest steel empire, he was incredibly wealthy. But instead of a gigantic fortune, multimillion heir Lomart appears to be millions in debt to banks, shops and car dealerships. As recently as several weeks ago, this mountain of misery was estimated to be 70 million. It now seems more likely that those financial institutions,

leasing companies, car dealerships, jewelers and other institutions, are collectively owed more than 100 million. The stories show that things went badly wrong for Lomart at the end of his life. He lost his entire fortune. I also find a very intriguing line in the same newspaper. Lomart's downfall was, according to his family, a result of bad investments, repossessions, scamming, fraud, bad checks, blackmailed by Russians with whom he had shady deals as an outside investor.

“What happened and how does any of this connect to your Katrina?”

Multiple sources have told me that they understand that a dispute between the pair arose after Lomart wrote a series of checks

to love Lace Group, your Katrina's company. They say Lomart signed them, but never paid up.

So that's when he was pursued for the money in court. After months of trying different avenues, I finally found someone who might be able to help me understand more, but he says he'll only meet face to face. In the Netherlands. I've just arrived in Maastric.

It's been three trains, five countries this morning or before lunchtime, a very European journey, come to meet someone who knew Lomart very well. We've been corresponding a bit, but he's been very reluctant to talk. We've agreed to meet in his cafe that's just opposites.

“We've been actually so close, I can see it at the window.”

So, yep, I'll head over. We've been this crossed. To my great relief, my source does agree to speak. One of the first things he does is point out of the cafe window, back towards the train station. He says he remembers Lomart having run out of money in the latter years of his life,

being unable to afford a train ticket here. He asked the boroughs and money because he had to meet someone. That person was your Katrina Barrett.

He was always saying, "I have to go to England, I have to go to see Mrs Barrett.

I used to think, "What do you do every weekend in London from Wednesday to Monday?" Mrs Barrett had so much influence on him. I could never understand why. These are our sources, words. They're voiced by an actor because he didn't want to be identified.

He was a good man, very smart, friendly, a diplomat, but he was a salesman, not an expert in finances. My source says Lomart inherited a steel factory from his mother, and his business did very well. It was bought by one company and another until it ended up with Barcelona-Mittal,

the world's second largest steel producer.

He says Lomart was offered a role there, and was tasked with being the contact for delivering steel to Russia. But he landed in the court case with Barcelona-Mittal, and he left the job. It sounds like he got out of his depth.

A 20 million project, it failed.

He had around 50 to 60 million, but he lost it all in 10 to 15 years. He was a very respectable man. How is it possible to lose all that money? I don't understand. Wow.

So it sounds like he didn't really have the means to be signing off 60 million euros to anyone in 2011. Maybe that is why he'd take the box. He'd lost everything by then.

“So how exactly does Yekashrina Barrett come into this story?”

My source is not sure how they met, but he says they certainly knew each other from the mid-Norties. He says Lomart talked about Mrs Barrett all the time. He also talked endlessly about the shares he'd bought, apparently via her recommendation, in Skorkava Innovation Center in Russia. She asked him to get money and he'd get shares.

He was planning to sell them. He never got one share. He also says that Yekashrina told Lomart she could help him get a new job. He was promised he would be the new director of Luke Oil in the Netherlands. He went around telling everyone.

This rings about. The Austrian police said Yekashrina posed as an agent of a Russian oil company in Vienna. Various people have told me she claimed to have connections to Luke Oil. My source says Lomart shawd Yekashrina with gifts, designer clothes, jewelry. He said Mrs Barrett's family was poor, very poor, from Ukraine. But she was very hardworking.

She told him her family had been helped by a connection to Romana Bramovich. That's Russian oligarch, Romana Bramovich, a former owner of Chelsea Football Club.

This isn't the first time I've heard Yekashrina claim he was some sort of relation.

Bridget says there was a photo of Yekashrina and a Bramovich on display in her May fair apartment. Bridget took a photo of it on her phone. I've seen it. Yekashrina and a Bramovich are smiling cosily shoulder to shoulder. But it's fake.

I found the original real version of this photograph. A Bramovich was posing with his wife. Yekashrina's image has been photoshopped over the top of her. Lomart also started to claim associations with a Bramovich in his later years. We found all these hundred and notes. He'd written them himself.

Dear Roman, thank you for asking me to be your son's godfather. It was nonsense that we're handwritten notes like that to Putin too. And made viedev. Yes, the former Russian president was very, very sad. A lot of people trusted him. He lived in a tunnel. All that he said he saw became his truth.

If you repeat it enough, it becomes the truth. Until his dying day Lomart talked about his Russian shares, he thought they would come good. He asked me to help investigate his finances. But he wouldn't tell me the full story. I found he had multiple different businesses,

mostly registered offshore in the Virgin Islands.

“And I think 15, 20 banks had loaned him money all over the world,”

in London, Belgium and the Netherlands, and he hadn't paid them back. He had so much debt. My source says he tried to look into Lomart's dealings with Yekashrina and Lovelace further. He contacted various lawyers who he thought were familiar with the matter. But he says he was warned off.

I can't remember their names, but they said stop it, stop it. Very, very dangerous. And then I said, OK, I have my own life. It sounds like Lomart really trusted Yekashrina. He was protective towards her.

Did he ever change his mind on her, I wonder? I think he started to doubt at the very end. But he would not allow himself to say, I have failed. When he was in the elders home in the last years, I looked him straight in the eyes. I said, I don't understand why you won't tell me what happened.

You're an old man. He said, I promise.

I will never tell what happened between me and Mrs. Barrett.

But two fingers in the air, swearing. It's a secret. I will never tell. It feels like a scene in a movie. I can imagine awesome wells playing Leo Lomart.

“My source says he never found out if the secret that Lomart claimed to have was business related or personal.”

It's difficult to work out exactly what went on with Lomart's financial meltdown. And of course, we can't attribute everything to Yekashrina. There were all sorts of deals going on. He was making a series of bad choices.

And it seems she had a huge impact on him. Three times during our chat, my Dutch source stops to google a word in English. For some reason it doesn't stick in his mind, but each time he's adamant that's the right word, is a word Bridget used to, squeezed. She felt squeezed by Yekashrina. And apparently Lomart was too.

“The big question is, did Yekashrina really get millions out of him ultimately?”

I haven't been able to independently verify the court documents I have seen,

which indicate that he admitted he owed her 62 million euros.

The court department tells me it only keeps fast for seven years. But I have managed to speak to someone who confirmed that there were many meetings in London between lawyers and Yekashrina Barrett around 2011. And these were all about transferring Leo Lomart's assets to her control. I've also been able to connect to Yekashrina to Shepard and Sons, a company once owned by Leo Lomart.

I know that she became the company's sole beneficiary. And credit to Roger here, he first put me onto this. So what have I been able to find out about Shepard and Sons? I know it's registered in Lichtenstein, and it has various offshore subsidiaries. Crucially, I know it has assets, including a multimillion-year-old apartment in Monaco.

The one where Yekashrina has been living. So this is how she got the luxury Monte Carlo address. Suddenly the pieces are falling into place.

“Leo Lomart appears to be the key to the wealth on display”

from Bridget's first mate Yekashrina. It's just unbelievable. It's just staggering. I spoke to Bridget about this discovery. Does it give you a little bit of hopes that there is that money hidden away somewhere you might eventually get your hands on it?

We might, but I don't know. I don't live in Ferryland. We ever get to find out. It will be really interesting to say the least. But I don't let it be the only thing. A breeze and thing cough every day, because otherwise I'd be crazy.

My understanding is that Yekashrina never did retrieve the full amount

from Leo Lomart's estate. Not the full 62 million euros. I do also believe that she had access to money before this, and even before Vienna, and I don't know the source of that. But the apartment in Monaco is a big interest to Bridget.

She wonders if it could be sold to pay her back, which she's owed. But Bridget needs Yekashrina to be honest about her connection to the apartment. In the summer of 2024, Bridget is getting ready for the contempt of court hearing.

“Will the judge find Yekashrina's story that the apartment belongs to her family, credible?”

And if the contempt hearing doesn't go Yekashrina's way, will she be heading back to jail? On big lives, we take a single cultural icon. People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Little Richard. And we pull apart the story behind the image.

And we do this by digging through the BBC's vast archives. Discovering forgotten interviews that changed exactly how we see these giants of our culture. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Wright.

And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives, wherever you get your podcasts. Well, we're at the Royal Courts of Justice. Wonderful building. Great to look out.

Yeah, lots to do. Sunday day. It's the 30th of July, 2024. London is in the middle of a sweltering heat wave. It's now a few hours after Bridget's beauty salon appointment,

and her unexpected encounter with Yekashrina in Harvey Nicole's department store. Bridget is waiting outside the high court for day two of the contempt of court hearing. She's feeling buoyant after her stint in the witness box the previous day. I felt quite good actually. She's talking with my colleague, producer Leona Hamid.

I just thought I was, you know, do my bit. You know, because I've had so many people running around for me, you know, finding information. And I hope I came over because I know to a lot of people.

The fact that I even had a million and I gave it away makes me sound as if I'm sort of posh.

But I'm not. But for everything I've got, ever since the age of 15, so I'm not gonna let some rich woman take my money off me.

She sounds so upbeat and optimistic, especially about the prospect of this verdict.

I feel very positive and I'm hoping it'll be the end. This case has been a battle of will since Yekashrina first came into her life. So who has the upper hand now? The previous day in court dealt with the allegations from Bridget's team, that Yekashrina lied under oath about her assets.

The next session is focusing on something else that's a reason. An extraordinary subplot. A few months earlier, Yekashrina presented some new evidence, which has set the lawyers wrangling ever since. Yekashrina sent an email directly to the court, attaching a new settlement agreement.

She said to my solicitors that we had met that only agreed on having a figure of 800,000, and she was happy to end the case.

Is this possible? Bridget has always sounded so determined. She still sounds determined.

800,000 pounds, that's half of the high court order.

“Remember that Bridget had already secured a judgement,”

compelling Yekashrina to pay her 1.6 million pounds. The new document that Yekashrina sent was typed up, and signed with the names Bridget Hutchcroft in Yekashrina Barrett. She said she had my autograph, and not my autograph, so it might signal you to it. Bridget says it's completely untrue.

She had never seen this document before. It just unbelievable. You just see my God, she never stops. You know, it's like there's no end to her tricks. The Akashrina, speaking via her lawyers, insisted the deal to half the amount of money owed was real, and it had been signed in Monaco.

She said Bridget had recently returned to Monte Carlo with her. As evidence, she provided photos of the two of them, looking very pale, beside the Mediterranean sea. And the photographs that I didn't have taken almost six years ago.

“Bridget says she can easily prove this, as she sent the picture to Roger at the time.”

In Yekashrina herself used the same picture as part of her original counter claim to illustrate their early friendship. Sending this document seems like such a risky endeavor on Yekashrina's part. I'm wondering if it's like being in the casino, taking a gamble, I've compared Bridget's signature on this document with another example of Bridget's signature, side by side. They do not look alike at all.

Bridget's signature clearly reads, "B.m.hatchcroft." Whereas the version on Yekashrina's form is an illegible squiggle. It seems to end within tiny different letters and has all sorts of additional flourishes. But it's not my opinion that matters.

It's what the judge says that will count. When you go into the room, it makes you shut up a little bit because of the wastier vibe. It's so quiet in there. Bridget's only owner was in court that day. She remembers the moment Yekashrina walked in, dressed to the nines.

She's wearing black. This like fitted gown. With like structured shoulders, cut out waste. She's got to blow out hair. She also remembers the outfit had a hood, which Yekashrina kept pulling up and down.

“It's supposed to start, I think, at like 2 p.m.”

And at like 157, there's this starts to be like this kind of... What's the word for it? Like a hurried energy between Bridget and her lawyer. There's suddenly a lot of whispering around the courtroom. And then the judge comes in. One of the first things that the judge says is, "I've seen the email, I presume you've seen it."

Email? What email? It seems like there's a new curve ball. Yekashrina has raised the Harvey Nickels encounter. She says the earlier this morning, she and Bridget were in the beauty salon together,

and the two of them agreed on yet another settlement figure. This isn't even the settlement I talked about a few moments ago. Again, Yekashrina says she has photo evidence. It was like... That is just unbelievable.

Yekashrina says this time, they agreed to settle on 1.5 million pounds.

There's so much chaos on Bridget's side. Like they're looking for the route technicians and number. They're like panic organising in the background. It was like tense because it was such a twist and the judge actually seems kind of annoyed by it. I've seen the photograph Yekashrina presented to the court.

It's taken by a third party. It shows Bridget leaning back in the chair with her eyes closed,

Yekashrina is standing beside her, almost a metre away,

posing to the camera with her hands on her hips. I just couldn't believe it, I just couldn't believe it. Nobody could. She obviously thought it might go through as evidence. And was to show that in actual fact, I was in cohoots with her. We were actually together, even doing a beauty treatments.

Right, cool little girls who've just fallen out. God. There have been many times we're working on the story where I found myself seriously wondering if Yekashrina's version of events could be true. This isn't one of them.

It doesn't make sense. While I would Bridget be negotiating now, which is hours away from having a judge pass her verdict in this contempt case.

“And why would you catch Rina suddenly agree to 1.5 million pounds?”

If the document allegedly signed by Bridget,

offering to settle at 800,000 pounds, was real, as she has claimed. As or so often the case of the a catch Rina, the situation is confusing. Bridget's team think it's just another delay tactic. Yikashrina has requested an adjournment so this new evidence can be considered. And then Bridget's lawyer gets up and says the reason this seems extraordinary

is because it didn't happen. Bridget was actually accosted by the defendant. So then the judge pauses to reflect on the matter. So there's like a couple of minutes where we all sit quietly while the judge is thinking about it. And then the judge says that she's rejecting the application for an adjournment.

The judge around the dismisses the Harvey Nichols photo. She says the picture shows women are not speaking to each other. They're not even facing each other in the photo. And even if she were to accept the settlement was being discussed,

what would be the relevance of that to matters on which she has to decide.

I can feel like there's a sense of relief.

“Then the judge moves on to addressing what they're all waiting for.”

Her ruling on the contempt of court charges. Pergery and forgery. The previous document that Yikashrina provided, the one with the dodgy signature, claiming that they'd settle for 800,000 pounds. The judge says she's sure it's a forgery.

The judge also says Yikashrina deliberately lied on oath about the ownership of the Monaco apartment. Judge says that she rejects the questioning during the initial court case was unclear. She says that Yikashrina had several opportunities to answer correctly

and that she clearly had a motive to lie about assets. The judge rules the contempt of court has been proved to a criminal standard. And while the judge is still talking, Hits turn as two women slip through the door at the back of the court. They were in black, they've got landiers and a lot of keys,

and they've got sets of handcuffs that are quite visible. The excitement builds around me, among widgets, party because it feels like this is it. This is happening in the risk of a prison sentence is real. But then the judge speaks again.

She says Yikashrina has referenced mitigating circumstances which she needs to consider. The sentencing the judge says we'll have to wait until two weeks time. The women with handcuffs set off on their way again to like whatever they were doing next.

So Yikashrina won't be taken to jail today. But Bridget's team feel that a custodial sentence is looking likely. And that's it. Everyone spills out onto the pavement outside the court again. I feel satisfied, I feel very good.

I feel everyone, everything went my way.

“I think she's going to be a given the prison sentence.”

She's fighting, even though it's around her own fighting. She makes these fights. She's the engineer of them, so she must enjoy it. Bridget's friend Roger is there too. And it's almost as if Roger has been sitting in a totally different room from Bridget.

This appointment, the verdict was given, but the actual judgment of what the sentence would be was delayed because he said, oh, there are mitigating circumstances. He didn't say what the mitigating circumstances were. He's talking about Yikashrina's lawyer.

I think she'll come up with some wonderful elaborate story that she's got something wrong with her or, you know, a budgie's dying or a pet pussycat's not well. And that's why she can't go to prison. You know, God will go.

Listen, to come up with what she did this morning was quite unbelievable. She's got plenty of time now to come up with something better. And she'll probably produce a whole load of doctors letters saying that she died last week, or something as crazy as that.

I'm not happy. I'm not happy. Very frustrated. Roger is at the end of his tether. Unlike Bridget, he thinks Yikashrina has the upper hand.

Who had won at this crucial juncture?

“I'll leave you to make your mind up on that.”

I don't know what Yikashrina was thinking as she left. She's been found guilty of a criminal offense, not for the first time in her life. Did she feel like she'd been wronged? Or did she feel relieved like she got off lightly? Does she feel worried about the impending sentence

and potentially going back to prison? Or is she confident she can divert it?

I can't get inside Yikashrina's head

as much as I'd like to know what's going on in there. But as for Bridget, I know she's in celebratory mode. I'll probably go to the pub and have some champagne. Bridget wants people to understand how manipulative Yikashrina can be. And now she feels vindicated.

She's already secured the piece of paper showing Yikashrina owes her all that money. But now she's also proven in the high court that Yikashrina is a liar. Two weeks later, the same crowd assembles at the court once again.

And once again, they're on teneter hooks, waiting to hear what sentence the judge will hand down.

And that's when the tables appear to turn. The judge begins to speak. The judge then gives off her reasons and decides that actually she was going to give Barrett a suspended sentence a four months. On the basis that she pays Bridget, a hundred thousand pounds plus her costs of this whole thing. Four months suspended.

The whisper around the courtroom was that it was going to be two years. The conditions are that as Roger says, she must hand over a payment of a hundred thousand pounds plus costs to Bridget by February 2025. Then she can avoid the jail term. Yikashrina is jubilant. She's blowing kisses across the courtroom. Outside the court, Team Bridget is less than thused.

She won. She didn't win, but she's got away with it. She's got away with it, with all her. I'm Roger. Roger has got it once again. All she's got is really a mild slap on the wrist.

“So, yeah, they were disappointed, but then really and truly I think I've had enough disappointments with this situation.”

So why should I be surprised? Just as Roger is going into full flow, he catches sight of Yikashrina exiting the building. There she is. Walking past now should probably blow me another kiss. We got me a kiss. No, no, no, she looked away that time. Oh, well, so there you are. Yikashrina has to pay a hundred thousand pounds to avoid jail.

This is a part from the money she owes Bridget, a separate penalty. A hundred thousand pounds. Surely Yikashrina has that. If you've come into multimillions in your lifetime, as she appears to have done by a Lea Lomot, you could surely find a hundred thousand down the back of the sofa. By the time I start working on this story in early 2025, that specific a hundred thousand pounds still hasn't been paid. The deadline has passed.

This could lead Yikashrina back to jail. If the judge issues an arrest warrant for noncompliance. And as for getting a money back, Bridget is still hoping that the moniker apartment might be the key. The UK judge has reprimanded Yikashrina for trying to cover up the ownership of it.

“So where does this leave things? Could Yikashrina sell it and pay back her debts?”

On big lives, we take a single cultural icon. People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, little Richard. And we pull apart the story behind the image. And we do this by digging through the BBC's vast archives. Discovering for gone interviews that change exactly how we see these giants of our culture. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes.

I'm a mental geochie, and Ky right, and this is Big Lives. Wherever you get your podcasts. In May 2025, I receive a tip-off that Yikashrina Barrett is facing a court case in Monaco. I contact French journalist Ocean Zittany, and ask her if she can attend court on our behalf to find out more.

We've heard everything I call that spoke to lawyers, the court clerks, the bailiff.

“Ocean, who works for French radio, is a godsend for us because she's dogged.”

She's determined to find out what's going on. Eventually, the persistence pays off. She's a case between Barrett and ship-boarding son. Bingo. So now the big question is, what an earth went wrong here. Nina was clearly involved with Shepard and Suns, having gained control of it via Leolomart.

And now, it's Shepard and Suns versus Yikashrina. To be honest, it doesn't wholly surprise me at this point. We've now seen multiple previously-worn relationships in Yikashrina's life descending to court cases.

This first hearing in Monaco is a little disappointing.

“It turns out that today was nothing more than a quick administrative step.”

Just a formal exchange of documents between the lawyers. We make a note of the next hearing date. On a month later, Ocean returns to court and she sends her first update. They're hearing starts, and it's a little bit messy. Yikashrina's lawyer, Clyde Biel, is first up, and he attempts to get the case thrown out.

As Yikashrina hasn't been given enough time to prepare, Yikashrina isn't in the courtroom herself. On the other side, Charles Lequeer is representing Shepard and Suns. The company has gone into bank property proceedings, and the administrators are trying to retrieve its assets. The court hears that the company bought three flats in the apartment building in Monaco, back in 2007. Shepard and Suns had mortgages on the properties, which Yikashrina has not paid for the lawyer.

We've heard stories like that before, but here's where it gets more interesting. Because of the failed loan repayments, Monaco's court has already ruled that the properties be seized and sold at auction. Here's the problem. Barrett is still occupying one of the flats, and she's not just leaving there. Worshiping entry, locking visits, not opening the door. Lequeer described the situation as nearly impossible, he said.

She's basically squatting, there is no lease, no title, nothing. And then he described the state of the property. He's seen it himself, he said the apartment is completely run down, even in cellar brews. She was in French, he insisted on that. There are multiple dogs leaving there. They defecating side, the place is filthy.

He said the property was once valued at over 17 million a row, but now it's down to 8 million a row, because of its condition and lack of success.

And the end of his argument, he turned up to the judge and said, "Excrew my language, your honor, but this is a total mess. It's a mess. A bottle in French." The Academy's relationship with Shepherd and Suns is complicated. Being beneficial owner of the company does not mean she owns its assets outright, but this role may have allowed her to live in the apartment. I've discovered the mortgage on the Monaco property is gigantic, more than 10 million euros.

And it's jointly held under the names Yakaterina Barrett and Shepherd and Suns.

“So does she take out a loan to pull equity out of the property?”

We've seen this before too. What I do know is that the mortgage was not paid. In August 2024, insolvency proceedings were initiated against Shepherd and Suns in Liechtenstein, where it's registered. The visual notice ran in the public Gazette. It asked creditors to come forward. Anyone that felt they had a claim on the company's assets. When Bridget hears this news, she adds her name to the list, even though her dispute is with Yakaterina and not Shepherd and Suns.

Multiple other people have come forward, because they also say they are owed money from Yakaterina. Bridget was buoyed by this at the start. She learns to know she's not alone in this. But the downside is she could end up being pushed to the bottom of the queue. It sounds like everything could be crashing down for Yakaterina. So many people are after her now. So many people want their money back. But where is she?

I've heard that she's just arrived back in Monaco. With an eviction date looming, is she going to batten down the hatches and lock herself in the apartment?

If she is in Monaco, I feel I need to track her down myself and see if she'll give me any answers face to face.

“For audacious is produced by novel and association with BBC Studios.”

For more from novel, visit novel.ordio.

The show is written and produced by me, Fiky Baker. The assistant producer is Beleria Rocker.

“The editor is Philippa Goodrich. Our fact checker is Danya Suleiman, production management from Sheree Houston, Charlotte Wolf and Joe Savage.”

Sound design mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson, narration recorded by Nick Thackeray Cron, development by Sonny Mar, Jess Brown Swinburne and a felon and Willard Foxton.

Additional production by Leona Hamid, Sasha Baker and Ziana Usef. Our voice actor is Paul Graham.

“The series artwork is designed by Christina Lemko. Our executive producer is Max O'Brien.”

Fraudacious is a novel production for BBC Studios. The BBC's commercial subsidiary.