When wealthy retired doctor Dr Robin Russell-Jones met Princess Katarina of Yugoslavia at the Royal Society of Arts in London, he felt good reason to trust her and her business partner.
After all, the 66-year-old is not only a cousin of King Charles but also a descendant of Queen Victoria through her mother and father.
So when Sharon Rea, Katarina’s friend and business partner, invited Dr Russell-Jones to invest £50,000 in a scheme, he jumped at the chance. Ms Rea, 57, assured him that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and intergovernmental involvement would turn his investment into £4million.
But instead, every penny disappeared, with Ms Rea’s business empire turning out to be a sham. Rather than a company HQ, her address is a council house in Swansea, south-west Wales.
He launched a civil claim, which he won last year, but because Ms Rea scrapes by on benefits, she is offering to pay the money back at £100 a month.
Dr Russell-Jones, a retired dermatologist and climate campaigner, bumped into Katarina and Ms Rea at the RSA, which they said they were thinking about joining, in April 2024.
Princess Katarina is descended from the former Yugoslav royal family.
Her grandfather, King Alexander I, was assassinated in 1934 and his successor – her uncle Peter II – fled the Nazis into British exile in 1941. He was deposed and replaced in 1945 by communist leader Josip Tito. Her grandmother was Prince Philip’s elder sister and she was born and raised in London.
Pictured: Princess Katrina of Yugoslavia
Sharon Rea, pictured, who invited Dr Russell-Jones to invest £50,000 in a scheme
In 1987, she married barrister Sir Desmond de Silva, with whom she had a daughter, Victoria. They divorced in 2010, with Mr de Silva reportedly declaring that she was ‘insufficiently intelligent for him’.
After her divorce, Katarina sparked controversy by running ‘royal’ etiquette and decorum classes with a former Buckingham Palace butler, allegedly to Queen Elizabeth’s displeasure.
Her business partnership with Ms Rea appears to date from at least five years ago, when the princess helped her to launch a company titled New Way Networking International.
The pair spoke at an event alongside each other, describing how they were ‘serving emerging and existing businesses around the world’.
Ms Rea claimed that she was building four new hospitals in Pakistan and had other foreign outposts in America and Kenya. Katarina said the company was ‘boosting human rights’, with Ms Rea saying it would be ‘carbon-positive’.
NWN International appears to have faded away. There is no website and no sign of any hospitals being built. However, the princess is still registered online as a director.
When Dr Russell-Jones met them, according to his claim, they ‘represented that they were organising an international series of concerts to raise funds to support various charitable causes.’
He told the Daily Mail: ‘When I met Princess Katarina, I told her I wanted to stage concerts to raise awareness of global warming and she told me that she was planning to do just that.
‘She started talking about a series of concerts called Tsunami of Sound, saying she and Sharon Rea had contacted Warner Bros about recording them. Sharon wrote her number on the back of the princess’s business card.’
Sharon Rea assured Dr Russell-Jones (pictured) that the International Monetary Fund and intergovernmental involvement would turn his investment into £4million
In May 2024, Ms Rea told him about a ‘time-sensitive business proposal’. The scheme would involve a £50,000 investment from Dr Russell-Jones and 1,000 per cent profit in a year from an ‘intergovernmental scheme’.
This would be multiplied eight-fold via ‘a separate vehicle backed by the IMF’.
Dr Russell-Jones, from Marlow in Buckinghamshire, quickly transferred the money, overriding his bank’s fears it was a scam.
But after Ms Rea’s daughter’s fiance asked him for £3,000 for brain surgery, he began to have reservations about the business proposal and started to think he had been duped.
He then sent a text message to Katarina asking if Ms Rea could be trusted but she didn’t reply.
In August that year, Katarina attended the daughter’s wedding in Swansea. Dr Russell-Jones refused an invitation after deciding he had been scammed.
He then launched the claim against Ms Rea. After she failed to respond, he was awarded £55,742, including costs and interest, last year. The case is ongoing because he has demanded more than her offer of £100 a month.
Dr Russell-Jones added: ‘Once I’d paid the money and asked the princess if Sharon was for real, she didn’t reply.
‘Now I’m £50,000 out of pocket, with no sign of getting it back. And there has never been a single Tsunami of Sound concert.’
Speaking at her home, Ms Rea said she was repaying Dr Russell-Jones but denied fraud.
Princess Katarina, who owns a flat in Earl’s Court, west London, has not responded to the Daily Mail’s requests for a comment.
However, a friend of the princess said: ‘I met Sharon, and fear now she was a scammer and that the princess was taken in.’
