Police have been contacted with new information after historic allegations emerged about former West Ham United joint-chair David Sullivan.<\/p>\n
The 77-year-old businessman resigned on Saturday after he was “made aware of the impending publication of serious historic allegations” concerning him.<\/p>\n
Essex Police said on Thursday that the force had “received some contact and inquiries into those are now under way”.<\/p>\n
On Monday, The Times and the BBC published the accounts of seven women who claimed Mr Sullivan engaged in sexually exploitative and predatory behaviour.<\/p>\n
Mr Sullivan, who made his fortune from owning pornographic magazines and sex shops, has dismissed the allegations as “entirely false”.<\/p>\n
The accounts from the women date back to the 1980s and 1990s, when Ms Sullivan owned tabloid newspapers the Daily Sport and the Sunday Sport.<\/p>\n
The allegations against Mr Sullivan reportedly involve him pressuring young or aspiring models in their late teens or early 20s.<\/p>\n
The Metropolitan Police said officers were investigating a report relating to the “alleged taking of indecent images and sexual exploitation at locations in London and Essex in the 1980s”.<\/p>\n
The force said this investigation related to one alleged victim and was being led by specialist detectives from the Met’s rape and serious sexual offences team.<\/p>\n
When he announced his resignation from West Ham, Mr Sullivan said: “The false allegations levelled against me have been sensationalised by the media.”<\/p>\n
He continued: “After a lifetime spent building businesses in the adult industry, in which I have met thousands of women, it is sadly inevitable that a small number of improper conduct claims are being made against me.<\/p>\n
“I categorically deny these claims.”<\/p>\n
He said stepping down from West Ham was an “incredibly painful decision to make, but it is one made out of love, respect and responsibility toward a football club and a fan base that deserve absolute unity and focus moving forward”.<\/p>\n
His resignation came after a challenging season for the side, which saw them relegated from the Premier League last month after 14 years in the top flight.<\/p>\n
Mr Sullivan and business partner David Gold completed their takeover of West Ham in 2010 after selling Birmingham City.<\/p>\n
Mr Gold died in 2023, aged 86.<\/p>\n
Mr Sullivan’s net worth was estimated to be around \u00a31.2bn in 2024, according to The Times Rich List.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have been contacted with new information after historic allegations emerged about former West Ham United joint-chair David…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-633736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}