Five arrests in Beckham kidnap plot

Published on Sunday 3 November 2002 00:00

THEY enjoy fame and fortune, but pay the price in fear.

The alleged plot to kidnap Victoria Beckham is the second time she and her famous family have been targeted by criminals desperate to cash in on their massive wealth.

Last night’s news that five people had been arrested in relation to the alleged kidnap plot comes just three years after the first attempt to seize former Spice Girl Beckham.

A police spokesman confirmed that officers had arrested four men and one woman in relation to a conspiracy they were tipped off about by the News of the World newspaper.

The arrests were made by officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Serious and Organised Crime Command for offences of theft and conspiracy to kidnap.

Scotland Yard refused officially to confirm that Victoria Beckham – who found fame and fortune as Posh Spice in the Spice Girls – was the plotters’ intended victim.

Privately, police confirmed the star was the intended target of the gang.

Last night, Stuart Kuttner, the managing editor of the News of the World, told Sky News: “In essence about six weeks ago we were alerted that a gang of Romanians and Albanian criminals, or people of that persuasion, had a plan to try and kidnap Victoria Beckham and hoped to collect a ransom of 5m.

“Our reporters, led by the man who’s rather well known as the fake sheikh – Mazher Mahmood – infiltrated the gang and in fact found themselves playing a central role with this group of people, most of whom were armed and extremely dangerous and potentially very violent.

“So much so that one of our people was recruited as the potential getaway driver for the abduction.”

He added: “Mazher Mahmood was alerted to the existence of this group of people and the fact that they had at that stage a sort of embryonic plan along these lines.

“On checking him out and checking a number of other people out, the gang accepted them as a legitimate sort of add-on – a legitimate part of the group for this enterprise.”

Of the alleged ransom plan, Kuttner said: “There was discussion among members of the gang in the presence of our reporters about this and at one point it was suggested it might be 1m and another member of the gang said it’s – I’ll paraphrase – hardly worth getting out of bed for that, why don’t we go for 5m?

“The plan was to hold Victoria at a secret address and had the children been with her – the two children Brooklyn and Romeo – to take them too and to try and extort 5m in return for their safe recovery.”

A spokeswoman for the paper added that there had been two police raids – one in London’s Docklands and one in Surrey.

A spokesman for Manchester United said the club was unable to comment on the matter at the moment.

Victoria Beckham gave birth in September to the couple’s second child, a boy named Romeo.

Her husband, who plays for England’s national soccer team and Manchester United, is one of Britain’s biggest sports stars and the Beckhams are among the country’s most popular celebrities.

Victoria Beckham watched Manchester United beat Southampton in Manchester on Saturday.

Sources close to the couple said Posh was told of the attempt before kick-off, but she did not tell her husband until the game was over.

Neither she nor her husband made any immediate comment on the arrests.

The five suspects were not charged with any crime and are being detained at different unnamed police stations across London.