The son of princess Caroline of Monaco, Andrea Casiraghi, had his driving licence confiscated after police reportedly spotted him driving at 200 kilometres per hour on a French motorway.

"/> The son of princess Caroline of Monaco, Andrea Casiraghi, had his driving licence confiscated after police reportedly spotted him driving at 200 kilometres per hour on a French motorway.

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Speeding prince loses licence

The son of princess Caroline of Monaco, Andrea Casiraghi, had his driving licence confiscated after police reportedly spotted him driving at 200 kilometres per hour on a French motorway.

Published: 22 December 2011 11:31 CET

The high-speed prince was driving his Audi on the A6 motorway which links Paris and Lyon. Police caught up with him close to the town of Mâcon, around 40 miles north of Lyon.

According to Le Parisien newspaper, police immobilized the 27 year old’s car and handed him a five month suspension. The nephew of prince Albert of Monaco will also need to appear in front of magistrates in Mâcon.

Casiraghi, who is a favourite of celebrity magazines, is second in line to the throne of the tiny principality, after his mother. He was listed as one of the 20 Hottest Royals by Forbes magazine in 2008.

The prince was just six years old when his father, Stefano Casiraghi, died in a boating accident in 1990.

He is currently studying for a masters degree at the university of Barcelona.

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Billionaire owner of Monaco football club taken into custody

Dmitry Rybolovlev. Photo: AFP

The Russian billionaire owner of Monaco football club was in custody Tuesday, his lawyer confirmed, the latest twist in his legal battle with a Swiss art dealer who he claims cheated him of up to one billion dollars and Sotheby's auctioneers.

Police officers also carried out a search Tuesday morning of Dmitry Rybolovlev's luxury penthouse apartment in the principality, said a source close to the case.

Rybolovlev's lawyer Herve Temine confirmed the latest developments, while stressing the principle of the presumption of innocence.

Temine's colleague Thomas Giaccardi said the latest move came after the seizure and analysis of a mobile phone belonging to one of Rybolovlev's lawyers, Tetiana Bersheda.

Since 2015, Rybolovlev has been locked in a legal battle with Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, who he accuses of having swindled him out of up to a billion dollars, by charging inflated fees.

When Rybolovlev's lawyer Bersheda produced an audio recording from her mobile phone that she said supported his case, the investigating magistrate in the case ordered text messages from the same phone to be extracted.

That led to Monaco prosecutors opening a corruption investigation against Rybolovlev in 2017.

His legal team has repeatedly argued that this analysis of the phone was a violation of the lawyer-client confidentiality. That issue is still being fought out in court, but some of the compromising text messages have already been leaked to the French press.

On October 2 this year, Rybolovlev opened a new front in his legal battle, launching a $380-million (333-million-euros) lawsuit against Sotheby's auction house through the New York courts.

In it, he accused the auction house of having helped Bouvier, their art advisor, carry out “the largest art fraud in history” — at his expense.

Rybolovlev says Bouvier tricked him over the acquisition of 38 works of art he bought from him over a decade for more than $2.1 billion.

“He repeatedly and blatantly misrepresented the acquisition prices for the paintings,” pocketing the difference himself, says the lawsuit.

Sotheby's has dismissed the lawsuit as “entirely without merit”.

In November 2017, it filed its own lawsuit against Rybolovlev in Switzerland and is seeking to have the action in New York dismissed.

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