‘Kidnapped’ model signs up as £2,000-a-time after-dinner speaker on sex trafficking
The British model who was allegedly kidnapped in Italy to be sold as a sex slave in the Middle East will be available for hire after signing up to give after-dinner talks at £2,000 (US$2,600) a time.
Chloe Ayling, 20, has joined London-based agency Kruger Crown and plans to speak to audiences about internet safety, sex trafficking and vulnerable women following her own ordeal in Milan, the Sun reports.
The agency’s public speaker clients include Adrian Chiles, Alan Titchmarsh and Boris Becker. It is believed her first talks will be unpaid.
Ayling shot to fame over the weekend after she was allegedly abducted, drugged and transported in a bag from Milan to Turin, where she was held for six days while her captors from the criminal gang Black Death reportedly tried to sell her on the dark web to Middle Eastern buyers.
She was released after six days by her alleged captor, Polish-born Lukasz Herba, 30, of Oldbury, West Midlands. He has allegedly told investigators he buried £180,000 loaned by Romanian gangsters in hills near Borgial, Italy, where he is said to have taken Ayling.
Questions about whether Ayling was complicit in a fake kidnapping have arisen after it was revealed she went shoe shopping with her alleged abductor and had met him during a business trip to Paris earlier in the year.
Ayling’s former agent, Carla Bellucci, said it was “hard” to answer whether she has any doubts about the model’s alleged kidnapping in Milan after revealing the 20-year-old did a topless ‘Page 3’ photoshoot on Tuesday as a way of “coping” with the trauma.
On Wednesday, the landlord who rented Herba the property, Cesare Prati, said: “I know she went shopping. The village is full of people in summer. Why didn’t she ask for help? I don’t understand.”
Ayling’s lawyers said she was too scared.
Her mother, Beata, said her daughter is still recovering from the “terrifying ordeal” and said the claims she was complicit in the plot are “all lies.”
Herba is due to appear in a Milan court next month. He has denied knowingly taking part in any crime and said his involvement stems from wanting to raise money to treat his leukemia.
He has told investigators he was hired by a group of Romanians to rent properties around Europe to store garments they were selling. He also said he posed as a photographer and met with Ayling.
Herba said he was paid £500,000 ($650,000), and that he backed out of the plan when he found out the Romanians intended to kidnap Ayling.
