£2m divorce battle with princess ex-wife left me sleeping on office floor

The wedding, in Salzburg, was always going to be the stuff of fairytales, given the bride’s aristocratic pedigree and the groom’s deep pockets.

Princess Marie-Therese von Hohenberg was great-granddaughter of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in 1914 plunged Europe into World War I, and her groom was a self-made millionaire from Ruislip, Anthony Bailey.

No fewer than 600 guests were invited, and the proceedings, in 2007, ran over four days. It was a protracted affair, although not as protracted as the subsequent divorce.

More than five years since a man sprang out from behind a bush outside his £6.25 million mansion in Twickenham, West London, and served Bailey with divorce papers, von Hohenberg v Bailey is still meandering through the court system and the latest hearing last week resulted in Bailey being handed a 12-month prison sentence in his absence. He is living beyond the jurisdiction of the court in Portugal, of which more later.

While there was no blue blood on his side, there was a glittering array of connections, including princes, presidents, politicians and even Popes. Bailey, a Catholic who became known as Mr Fixit, counted everyone from Prince Charles to Pope John Paul II as friends.

But the high-flying PR and public affairs consultant was perhaps most proud of his association with Tony Blair. 

Indeed, their relationship proved an extremely fruitful one from the then Prime Minister’s point of view, with Bailey credited with raising £8 million for Blair’s flagship City Academies project, as well as making a personal donation of £50,000 to New Labour in 2006.

And when Bailey and Marie-Therese got engaged a year later, the PM sent an effusive handwritten letter of congratulation on No 10-headed notepaper. 

‘Dear Anthony and Marie-Therese,’ he wrote. ‘Many congratulations — it is wonderful news and I hope you will be marvellously happy together. Best wishes, yours ever, Tony.’

Not surprisingly, Bailey was once described as ‘the most influential man you have never heard of’, and for years spent his time jetting across the globe, dabbling in all things diplomatic and grand.

Friends in very high places: Anthony Bailey with Prince Charles in Saudi Arabia in 2001

In fact, it sounds as if he had been in more palaces in his life than his new wife had.

‘I’m sure I had, because my job was all about hopping on a plane to Peru or Bulgaria to see King This, or Prince That,’ he points out. 

‘But because my ex came from a background where people have castles and palaces and trust funds, there is this perception the wealth somehow came from her.

‘But although her family were richer than I ever was and paid for the wedding, I provided every penny in the marriage. She didn’t buy one house, one car, even one umbrella, nor did I expect her to. When she moved in with me, she didn’t bring so much as a pillow.’

Alas, things went badly wrong. Mr Bailey claims, rather sensationally, that when his wife left him — as she did, ‘with no warning’, in 2016 — she ended up, metaphorically, taking all the pillows.

He went from being the owner of that Twickenham mansion to sleeping on a mattress on the floor of his office. He is, he argues, the loser in a right royal divorce battle that could yet land him in jail.

‘I have lost everything,’ he says. ‘My wife, home, my business, my health. I was a millionaire, yes. I had that life. But it is gone.’

It takes a while for him to get to the bottom of the list of things he has lost, and I am reminded of Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game and the famous conveyor belt. I am expecting the cuddly toy at any moment. 

‘The carpets, gone. Paintings, icons, books. I lost the very chairs I was sitting on. They let me keep a few things — a fridge, I remember — but I came out of the marriage with little more than the clothes on my back.’

Yet the picture painted by Mr Justice Peel in the High Court last Tuesday was very different. He sided with the Princess who claimed she was the penniless one, who had been wronged, shortchanged and duped. Mrs Bailey had previously been awarded £2 million in their divorce settlement but had received only half of this.

The judge not only admonished Mr Bailey for failing to take steps to release assets (specifically to allow the sale of a £3.3 million villa in Portugal), but concluded he had obstructed the court at ‘almost every possible opportunity’ and deployed ‘numerous tactical and forensic ploys to attempt to delay the process’.

In an unusually severe ruling, Mr Justice Peel added: ‘His behaviour displays wilful obstruction and barefaced contempt for the court process. It is a shameful spectacle deserving considerable opprobrium.’ 

Mr Bailey’s failure to appear in court to take this verbal punishment beating meant he was promptly found to be in contempt of court and sentenced.

So technically, he should be behind bars, yet here we are on Zoom, with him in Portugal, discussing the price of Ubers while he’s reportedly on the run.

‘On the run? Bulls**t!’ he says, then apologises for swearing (he does like to portray himself as very much the gentleman). ‘I am being treated for aggressive prostate cancer and the courts knew that.

‘This is where my doctors are and my priority is to get well, because how can I rebuild my life unless I am well?’

He was diagnosed with cancer in 2019 and it seemed to have been successfully treated, but it returned last year, in a more aggressive form. ‘I blame the stress of all this,’ he says. ‘It has had a devastating effect on my physical and mental health. I had suicidal thoughts and was treated in the Priory. What I have been put through is torture.’

No he is not living the ‘life of Riley’ at his luxury villa, as was claimed in court and he maintains the villa is not his to sell.

‘It is held in trust for our child, and I even have to get permission from the trustee to stay there unless I am with my child, who is the real victim in this.’

Contested: The fabulous Portuguese property

So where is he staying? ‘With friends. Very kind friends. I have a lot of friends and 90 per cent of them have supported me. They have opened their homes to me when I had nowhere else to go.’

He claims his friends have also lent him their cars, because he no longer owns one. ‘In the winter months I do rent or borrow one, but in the summer I walk. Or I get an Uber. Ubers are surprisingly cheap in Portugal.’

But his ex’s side claim he drives a Tesla and there is one sitting in the driveway of the Portuguese villa. Who owns it? ‘The trust,’ he says.

Where to start unravelling this one? They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well ditto when it comes to a man-of-some-standing who feels he has been taken to the cleaners in the divorce courts. Today there is much talk of him being the victim.

‘I believe there is no place in the civil courts for disputes like this,’ he says. ‘She has gone down this path because she is convinced there is a pot of gold at the end of the imaginary rainbow, that I am hiding millions somewhere. She is wrong.’

Ah, but there is. The Portuguese villa is the pot of gold and, quite aside from the fact it is beneficially owned by a trust registered in Cyprus, he says there are two mortgages secured on the property, held by friends of his. The British court found these were sham mortgages, a finding he disputes.

He appears to be funding his legal costs by taking out loans from all and sundry. ‘I have taken about 20 different loans from family and friends, to help finance my legal costs,’ he says.

And those costs are mounting. His wife — whose lawyers said she would not be commenting on her ex-husband’s version of events — has commenced legal proceedings in Portugal, where she is being counter-sued by the holders of the mortgages on the villa, and there is further legal wrangling in Cyprus where the alleged trust that owns the villa is based.

What an absolute mess, before we even get to the emotional fallout. How can a couple who once looked so happy — and who have a child — come to this? Mr Bailey’s account of their meeting and courtship suggests they always were on different pages.

They met in the early 1990s at a society ball, but ran into each other again in 2006 at a wedding in Rome and things soon got serious. Mrs Bailey had trained as an architect, and he thought, before they started talking about children, she might like to work.

‘I didn’t expect her to. I was happy to provide, but I thought it might help her settle into life in the UK. I introduced her to my friend Richard Rogers (the late, famous architect), but she wasn’t interested. She never worked.’

They had a child (he is forbidden by the courts to divulge the name or sex) and he thought they were happy. Then on July 20, 2016, his wife kissed him goodbye and walked out of the house, for good.

He describes what happened next as an ambush. ‘We had been due to move to Portugal the next day. Everything was ready, the tickets were booked. But it would have been more difficult for her in Portugal with regard to divorce proceedings. We had been married there. Although the religious ceremony was in Austria, the legal one was in Portugal.’

Now we come to the money side, where it gets really tricky. Although outwardly the Baileys were silly rich, he argues that it was more complicated. Yes their house — which the courts ruled had to be sold to facilitate a fair distribution of assets — had been valued at £6.25 million, but there was a massive £3 million mortgage on it. Huge! ‘Well, not if the house is worth £6.25 million,’ he argues.

The trouble was a hoped-for sale to a Russian buyer fell through. ‘Then the financial downturn came. Then Brexit and Covid.’ The house sold for £4.5 million. He claims his wife — ‘who was promised up to £1.9 million’ — walked away with £1 million. ‘And I got nothing from the house, the house that I bought and that had been in my name.’

It must rankle, but we must rem-ember that the courts have always treated the contested Portugal villa as another asset. When Bailey says he was left homeless, he is careful to add ‘in Britain’.

It does appear, though, that, whatever the court papers say, he has spent much of the past four years sleeping in less grand surroundings than he was used to while he was married.

And we have spoken to a number of friends of Mr Bailey’s, some who are public figures, who corroborate his story, or parts thereof.

Clare Head, a former Tory mayor of Richmond-upon-Thames, who was close to the couple, was with him on the day he received the divorce papers (‘His face went white,’ she says), and has watched the unfolding drama with horror.

‘When his business failed, he talked about going to stay with his brother, or sofa-surfing, as they call it. I insisted he move into my house and he stayed for two years. He insisted on paying rent. The idea that he had millions stashed in the Cayman Islands or something is just ridiculous. All his friends — and Anthony has many many friends — are appalled.’

It is certainly a rum state of affairs, with everyone (save for the lawyers) claiming they are penniless. Mr Bailey has been advised he cannot be extradited from Portugal because his jail sentence relates to a civil matter.

So will he return to the UK to face the music? He says no, he has more pressing matters. ‘I’m not going to go jumping between hospitals and consultants on the basis of what’s going on in London? No, I’m concentrating on my health. I want to sort this out, but I have to be alive to do it.’