MANAMA: Russell King, a convicted fraudster allegedly living in Bahrain, has swindled Dubai-based luxury retail brands and top hospitality groups to the tune of millions of dollars by falsely claiming a magazine run by him was the Middle East edition of Financial Times, according to a report in Gulf News.

The report published on Wednesday said King launched a magazine called FT Business Arabia whose first and last issue was released in July 2017.

The magazine’s publishing company Gulf Digital struck allegedly advertising revenue and barter deals with many businesses who were led to believe it was authorised by the FT.

The report says Gulf Digital is also the publisher of Food and Travel Arabia, a Bahrain-based magazine that King is believed to be managing for “almost four years now using various aliases and fabricated circulation statistics”.

“FT Business Arabia is not an FT publication and has never been authorised by the FT,” a spokesperson of Financial Times told Gulf News in an email statement.

The report said Gulf News was in possession of a copy of FT Business Arabia with FT’s famous salmon-pink logo and advertisements of allegedly duped UAE business entities.

The Financial Times said its legal team was investigating the alleged misuse of their logo, it added.

King is described as a serial swindler having been sentenced to two years in prison in 1991 for insurance fraud after trying to get £600,000 in theft claims for his Aston Martin that never left his garage.

A BBC Panorama documentary on him called him ‘The Trillion Dollar Conman’.

© Copyright 2018 www.gdnonline.com

Copyright 2018 Al Hilal Publishing and Marketing Group Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).