Celebrity sex trial sensation

An English woman appeared in a Paris court today accused of running a multi-million-pound prostitute ring servicing hundreds of VIP and celebrity clients.

Convent-educated Margaret MacDonald will claim she was running a legitimate escort agency and her girls were simply providing platonic solace, at up to £800 an hour, for lonely businessmen.

But French police say she controlled 453 prostitutes and 30 gigolos across the world using a laptop computer and a bank of mobile phones.

One client is said to be a major British TV star whose name may be read out in court.

MacDonald, who stood in the dock in a baggy, white cotton smock and waist-length hair, is charged with "procuring for the purposes of prostitution" and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. She denies the charges.

French police describe MacDonald, 43, as "fascinating, sophisticated and ruthless".

The investigating judge told the court: "She ran almost 500 prostitutes via internet and newspaper advertisements. Her girls charged from £300 to £800 an hour and gave 40 per cent of the money back to MacDonald, who used the pseudonym Nicky."

The court was told that MacDonald lived a jet-set life of five-star hotel suites and chauffeur-driven cars as she travelled the world running her empire.

MacDonald told the court she made each of the 453 girls working for her sign a contract saying they would not have "physical relations" with men she put them in contact with.

She said: "As far as I was concerned they were just providing company for lonely men. I was not aware any sex was taking place."

Police surveillance found MacDonald never spoke about sex or money on the phone, but merely organised liaisons between girls and clients, the court heard.​

Before the trial, Paris vice squad officers told how hookers, mostly aspiring young models from Britain, eastern Europe and South America, charged for sex with super-rich clients.

MacDonald had business degrees, spoke eight languages, dressed only in designer clothes and was described by vice squad chief Daniel Rigourd as "our biggest pimping arrest for many years". He said: "She is an exceptional suspect; brilliant, distinguished, truly a class operator."

MacDonald was arrested after undercover vice squad detectives tracked her to a Paris hotel. Police seized a briefcase stuffed with 14 mobile phones and a laptop computer containing a list of all her girls and the names of hundreds of regular clients.

Police said her operations were mainly based in London, Rome, Vienna, Paris and the French Riviera, but she also had links to America, the Middle East and Far East.

MacDonald, born into a middle class English family in Bedford in 1959 and who later moved to Windsor, has a degree from a London business school and diplomas in commerce from Reims University and the Sorbonne university in Paris.

Her defence lawyer Emmanuel Marsigny will argue that the glut of adverts appearing daily in the Guides and Escorts section of the International Herald Tribune newspaper will confirm the widespread acceptance of such agencies across Europe.

MacDonald will deny dealing with requests for sex or taking money from the girls, insisting that she only accepted payments directly from clients. M Marsigny said: "It is an important distinction because although prostitution is not illegal in France, procuring or managing call girls is."

The trial continues.