Mother-of-two who won £72million from her tycoon ex is now suing her fitness trainer lover

When she walked away from her marriage with a £72 million settlement from her wealthy financier husband, Mandy Gray appeared to have the world at her feet.

Aside from the vast sums of cash at her disposal after one of the most expensive divorces ever seen, the mother of two had her new lover at her side, the handsome physical therapist she met at the luxury gym in Chelsea where he once tended to both her and her husband.

Over the six years that followed her 2013 marriage break-up, Mandy and New Zealand-born Hamish Hurley gallivanted around the world on private jets, helicopters and a £4 million yacht bought with Mandy’s riches, until January 18 this year when 50-year-old Mandy unceremoniously dumped her 46-year-old lover while staying at their rented home in Malta.

Three weeks ago, the Mail told how Mandy had since launched an extraordinary legal bid to stop her erstwhile boyfriend getting his hands on the £20 million worth of spoils they accumulated during their time together — a villa in Umbria, a New Zealand sheep farm and ‘hypercars’ worth millions, garaged in Switzerland, where they are registered in Hamish’s name.

‘Mandy appears to know no limits when it comes to trying to obtain what she wants by force,’ said one of his lawyers in court at the time.

What, then, is the truth about Mandy and Hamish’s ill-fated love affair? Hamish, who is now living with his parents in his native New Zealand and is said to have just £539 in the bank, denies any allegation that he was an ‘archetypal gold-digger’

There are, however, two sides to every story and this week it was Mandy’s turn. Striding into the Royal Courts of Justice in London she gave her own version of events through documents presented to the court. Seen exclusively by the Mail, these reveal in full what a truly jaw-dropping saga this is.

For while Hamish has previously cast himself as the victim and accused Mandy of ‘rewriting our whole relationship’, Mandy now paints a disturbing picture of a man who ruthlessly controlled and manipulated her while pretending to have her best financial interests at heart.

When she finally summoned the courage to end their affair, she says he refused to relinquish control of assets bought with her millions but placed out of her reach by complex layers of company registration.

‘Hamish subjected me to constant and unbearable pressure which caused me to do things I would never ordinarily do and act in a way which, I can now see, was irrational. The events of the past six years are a mess,’ she said in the signed affidavit she presented to the court.

Mandy was married to Randy Work, above, a Texan financier who made about £150 million while working for a private equity firm in Tokyo. The couple lived in a £35 million townhouse in Kensington with their two children and regularly worked out at the gym

She added: ‘Hamish isolated me, he criticised and undermined me, he imposed himself on me when it came to decision-making, he intimidated me, he pressured me sexually and he abused me physically.’

Her extraordinarily detailed account takes in squabbles over an Andy Warhol painting she claims Hamish wanted to give to a friend, disagreements over whether or not to buy a car which once belonged to Michael Schumacher and her claim that her lover pressured her into buying a 16th-century Italian palazzo where neither of them has spent a single night.

Then there was a £2 million Pagani Zonda R hypercar, identical to one owned by Roman Abramovich and one of only five in the world, as well as a Porsche purchased from Nigerian billionaire Kola Aluko.

If that wasn’t damning enough, she accuses Hamish of ‘suffocating’ her by demanding to know where she was at all times, questioning her about phone conversations and needling her about her habits. 

‘His criticism covered all aspects of my life,’ she said, ‘from how I brushed my teeth, to my posture, my knife chopping skills, how I dressed and even when and how it was appropriate to untie my shoes.’

Right from the start, says Mandy, Hamish enjoyed a ‘lavish international lifestyle funded by me’, which included rent-free living in her £5 million home in London’s Marylebone, clothes purchased from Tom Ford and meals out at Michelin-starred restaurants. She is pictured arriving at the Royal Courts of Justice with her lawyer

She claims that he wouldn’t let her make decisions on her own, cracked jokes about domestic violence and, even more disturbingly, that he ‘regularly held me down against my will’.

‘Most often this involved him putting his hand over me to prevent me from getting out of bed,’ she said. ‘He would not let me leave the bed until he decided that it was time.

‘He would tell me to relax. I would have to pretend to relax and wait. Sometimes I cried and begged him to let me go. Sometimes I would make up a story to get him to release me (for example that I was going to urinate in the bed).’

On one occasion, she claims that he slapped her face at Oslo airport after she remarked that she didn’t like champagne.

This disturbing account of their six-year affair is utterly at odds with Hamish’s insistence that the couple’s relationship was ‘intense, intimate, loving, consensual and collaborative’.

He has told the Mail that ‘we were both incredibly happy and in love for six years and we built a wonderful life together’.

His barrister James Bailey QC said: ‘During the course of their relationship Mandy and Hamish had come to own a variety of property around the world together. Mandy provided the funds for their joint life together, building for their future.

‘But now she has changed her mind about Hamish, she wants it all back. It seems that the accumulation and preservation of wealth after the fact is a common thread in Mandy’s relationships.’ So what is the truth about their relationship? 

As the Mail has previously revealed, American-born Mandy and Hamish met in 2009 at the exclusive KX gym in Chelsea, an £8,000-a-year private members’ health club frequented by the likes of Prince Harry and Pippa Middleton.

At the time, Mandy was married to Randy Work, a Texan financier who made about £150 million while working for a private equity firm in Tokyo. The couple lived in a £35 million townhouse in Kensington with their two children and regularly worked out at the gym.

The couple had also bought this yacht which was purchased in 2016. Over the six years that followed her 2013 marriage break-up, Mandy and New Zealand-born Hamish Hurley gallivanted around the world on private jets, helicopters and a £4 million yacht bought with Mandy’s riches, until January 18 this year when 50-year-old Mandy unceremoniously dumped her 46-year-old lover while staying at their rented home in Malta

But when the marriage ended and Mandy set up home with Hamish, she and Randy divorced and spent two years fighting in the High Court before Mandy walked away with half her husband’s fortune.

‘In the beginning he [Hamish] was fun to be around,’ she says in her affidavit. She became increasingly dependent upon Hamish as her 20-year marriage disintegrated into divorce. Indeed, despite consulting seven different wealth advisers after receiving her mammoth divorce settlement she claims Hamish told her that they were ‘only after your money’ and she’d be better off trusting him.

She adds that while he ‘supported me emotionally through the divorce and helped me get through a difficult time’, he soon began to exert ‘great control over my life’. She admits feeling a sense of loyalty to him for helping her and feeling ‘a huge sense of shame at the prospect of a second failed relationship’.

‘I did not know how to get myself out of the situation of Hamish’s abusive behaviour, manipulation and taking advantage of me financially,’ she says.

Among the assets bought during their relationship was this 2,000-acre Italian estate 

Right from the start, says Mandy, Hamish enjoyed a ‘lavish international lifestyle funded by me’, which included rent-free living in her £5 million home in London’s Marylebone, clothes purchased from Tom Ford and meals out at Michelin-starred restaurants. She paid for holidays all over the world, including trips to Thailand, India, the Maldives, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Brazil.

Hamish, she says, went on lengthy yoga and meditation retreats and enjoyed £40,000 worth of stem-cell injections, vitamin IVs and ozone treatments.

She even opened up a Swiss bank account for him and, while she was still waiting for her divorce payout, gave him two valuable rings to sell on her behalf at Sotheby’s. With her agreement, the proceeds were paid into his account.

‘I had not yet received any money from my divorce and I needed cash,’ she says.

But Mandy also claimed in court this week to have discovered that Hamish was plotting his way to wealth long before he met her, setting out his plans on computer documents with titles such as ‘Future plans and visions’ and ‘101 Things To Do’.

She says that before he met her he had taken various ‘money-making’ courses — two of them were called Do This Get Money and Mailbox Millions. 

Among his ambitions were ‘to have a net worth of £1 billion by age 50 years’ and ‘own the most successful soccer team in the world’ as well as ‘to spend one week per month in a tropical location surfing … to drink 1995 Krug Clos D’Ammonay … to get a 2011 Porsche 911 GT3 RS Gen II with ceramic brakes and lithium battery’.

In April 2014, she spent $5,000 (just under £4,000) of her own money to send him on a marketing course called the Super Hard 2.0 and Mastermind Brain Trust Community.

‘Hamish convinced me that if he took such courses and reached out to his contacts, then “we” could build successful businesses,’ she says, adding: ‘I can see now that Hamish used our relationship as a “vehicle” to get access to the trappings of a lifestyle that he could not otherwise attain.’

What is not in dispute is that while Hamish and Mandy were together, they ploughed a large chunk of her fortune into various assets and business ventures.

Their eye-watering shopping list included a run-down palazzo on the 16th-century Castello di Reschio estate in Umbria, north of Rome, which she bought for £8.5 million before embarking on a £5.5 million restoration project.

They agreed to register the property in both their names.

This week, she claimed that even before he met her, Hamish had listed in his plans to ‘own property in Italy’ and had included a photo of Castello di Reschio in a video he made.

Next was the seven-figure sum spent on four rare ‘hypercars’: a Ferrari 458 Speciale, a Pagani Huayra Coupe, a Pagani Zonda R and a Ferrari F1 2003 GA driven by Michael Schumacher, now said to be registered in the name of a Swiss company of which Hamish has full control.

She also laid down deposits for a Pagani Huayra Roadster and a Ferrari 488 Pista.

‘I want to make it clear that none of the hypercars I purchased were “toys” or gifts for Hamish or me,’ she says in her affidavit, going on to explain that she bought them because interest rates were low and she wanted to buy assets that would appreciate. Again, she claims that the cars were registered in Hamish’s name because ‘it was he who had the relationship with the person who sourced the cars’. That person was Ronnie Kessel, the son of Formula 1 racing driver Loris Kessel.

Striding into the Royal Courts of Justice in London she gave her own version of events through documents presented to the court. Seen exclusively by the Mail, these reveal in full what a truly jaw-dropping saga this is [File photo]

Again, she claims to have subsequently discovered that Hamish had previously kept lists of hypercars he wanted to acquire.

She claims that cars purchased with her millions were registered in the name of HK Brothers, a company set up by Hamish and Ronnie and that she was told it was for tax reasons.

Another £10 million was spent on a sheep and beef station on New Zealand’s South Island. She and Hamish both own shares in the company they set up to make the purchase but for complex legal reasons, she says, he owns more than her, giving him the controlling interest.

What clearly galls her the most, however, is the £7 million she ploughed into Hamish’s Zuma Juice business, a project involving a food supplement of 41 powdered superfoods that could be mixed with water to make a green juice.

The venture backfired after a marketing video compared an overweight woman in a wheelchair guzzling cheese puffs and fizzy drinks with a super-fit woman making fresh juice, drawing a stream of complaints from disability campaigners.

What, then, is the truth about Mandy and Hamish’s ill-fated love affair? Hamish, who is now living with his parents in his native New Zealand and is said to have just £539 in the bank, denies any allegation that he was an ‘archetypal gold-digger’.

Mandy claims to have finally ended their relationship after Hamish held her down in front of a friend. She says she was living in ‘a sort of scared tension’ all the time.

Perhaps the biggest mystery is the level of financial naivety Mandy appears to have displayed. 

Regarding the purchase of the £8.5 million Italian palazzo, for example, she says: ‘I should also point out that the notary did not speak English and, while a translator was present, nobody explained the terms of the contract to me.’

Every business opportunity she says ‘was part of Hamish’s long-term goals and not, as he presented it to me, serendipitous opportunity’.

Whose version of events will be most convincing to the courts remains to be seen. The pair are locked in a legal wrangle over where their case should be heard. Hamish wants to it to be dealt with in the New Zealand courts. Mandy favours London.

Above all, the evidence she gave in court holds a magnifying glass to a wealthy world unimaginable to most.

In November 2017, she says, Hamish ‘made a very strange request of me’ when he asked her to provide a valuable Andy Warhol painting as a gift to his friend Ronnie Kessel. Copies of WhatsApp messages between the pair show how casually they discussed it.

While Hamish writes ‘Ronnie wants to get a Warhol’ and ‘can we give it to him’ and ‘I didn’t think we wanted it that much’, Mandy says she wants to keep it, pointing out that the 1961 painting of a pink shoe hung on her daughter’s bedroom wall for years and cost £150,000.

Mandy Gray’s tale is perhaps a salutary one for anyone who has ever dreamed of being fabulously wealthy, for what is clear is how much of her time has been spent worrying about how to hang on to the money, how to invest it and whose advice to trust.

Ultimately, it might be argued, the burden of owning such a fortune outweighs the pleasure of having it. Certainly, it appears to have left little room for romance.

Additional reporting: Vanessa Allen