LONDON (AFP) — Two men were found guilty and jailed for five years each Friday after trying to blackmail a British royal with claims he performed a gay sex act on an aide, egged on by a stripper.
Ian Strachan, 30, and Sean McGuigan, 40, demanded 50,000 pounds in return for not publicising tapes including allegations by an employee about the royal, identified only as Witness A.
The employee, Witness D, suggested the member of the royal family took drugs and performed a sex act on him at a party, with a stripper encouraging.
Strachan and McGuigan failed to sell the tapes to newspapers and were caught by a police sting operation in September.
They were convicted by a jury at the Old Bailey following a three-week trial estimated to have cost more than one million pounds.
Judge Jeremy Cooke told the pair: "You were motivated by greed and also by revenge. You were prepared to tell lie after lie.
"This offence has been described as one of the ugliest and most vicious crimes in the calendar of criminal offences and was described in this court as a dirty, filthy and hideous crime.
"A person in A's position, with a reputation and business interests, is particularly susceptible to the publication of scurrilous and damaging material whether it is true or false."
During the trial, an extract from the royal victim's statement to police on September 5, 2007 was read out in court.
"As far as these comments, attributed to D, about my personal and professional life are concerned, I can only say they are spurious and without foundation," said the member of Queen Elizabeth II's family.
In early 2007, Strachan and McGuigan made a series of audio and video recordings of a man who had been employed for some years by the royal, the jury heard.
Much of the eight hours of material was recorded when the man was drunk or "under the influence of other substances," said prosecutor Mark Ellison.
"He was also shown recounting stories and alleged experiences, making allegations of impropriety as to how his employer conducted aspects of his business.
"And there were three audio files of the man apparently asserting that the member of the royal family who employed him had performed an act of oral sex on him."
The recordings contained material which would have potential to "cause embarrassment and hurt to his employer" and a number of other members of the extended royal family, Ellison added.
It was the first time in more than a hundred years that a member of the Royal Family has been revealed as the subject of a blackmail plot.
Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence and the eldest son of King Edward VII, paid 200 pounds in 1891 for a series of love letters to a prostitute.
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