"Help me clear my name begs exile Basualdo"

Daily Express - Wednesday 14 June 1989

"Argentina's leading bounder, Luis Basualdo, tells me he is attempting to clear his name after his former employee and sometime lover, Christina Onassis, accused him of embezzling £800,000 from her estate. 

Certainly, police in Austria were interested to interview Basualdo, 42, former son-in-law of Viscount Cowdray and Scotland Yard were ready to pounce should the polo loving libertine step foot on this land. 

Luis, who has taken exception to my calling him the kind of man to give Argentina a bad name, insists that the shipping heiress withdrew charges against him and they were on the best of terms before her death in December. 

"I was on Christina's payroll for three years and she never paid me" said Basualdo from the safety of Mexico. "She paid me $30,000 a month, but I wasn't paid from 1983 to 1986 except one payment in September '83". 

And what, you may wonder, did Basualdo do for the not ungerous stipend? 

"I was her constant companion, her boyfriend at times, I put her to bed at 6am and woke her at 11. I used to speak to the pilot, the chauffeur, arrange her dinner parties. She sent me on a mission to Sweden to take photographs of her husbands mistress. I had to fly from Miami to New York to Denmark to Stockholm. She was curious I suppose. I had to hold her hand. Once I had to leave dinner with the Duke of Beaufort to go to her because she was in a state and complaining that her husband had said she was too fat and had not been making love to her. She was very lonely at times and depressed. When she had breakups she would not wash and I had to call in psychiatrists. Sometimes I was with her 24 hours a day". 

Enough Basualdo, enough. 

If he is to come back to England where his children Charlotte, 15, and Rupert, 13, reside he will have to tell all this to the constabulary. 

His claim that Christina withdrew charges is now a little hard to establish. Indeed, a senior detective involved in the case tells me: "It was the banks who were had. They have sufficient evidence to carry on with the prosecution even without Christina". 

"But it is unfair to me persecuted over some caprice of Christina's" wails the bounder. "I did not take the money. It was sent to me by her secretary. I want to clear my name".

Good luck, hombre."