France charged a British citizen with offences including money-laundering and identity theft after he allegedly organised a bizarre ceremony at Disneyland Paris where he played the role of the groom in a fake marriage with a nine-year-old girl, prosecutors said Tuesday.
He is suspected of hiring the theme park before it opened to the public on Saturday for the staged wedding event, in a contract worth 130,000 euros.
The man, who has not been named but has a criminal record in the UK for sexual assault offences, has in addition to his charges also been named as an assisted witness — a step before being indicted — in a probe into suspected corruption of a minor, prosecutors said.
The incident initially caused grave alarm when staff alerted police that it could have concerned an illegal child marriage, with the purported “bride” a nine-year-old Ukrainian girl.
It later turned out to have been entirely staged but authorities immediately launched an investigation.
The British man played “the role of the groom after being professionally made up to display a face completely different from his own”, the prosector for the Meaux region Jean-Baptiste Bladier told AFP.
French judicial authorities were informed by their British counterparts that the man “has been convicted in the past, notably for sexual offences against minors”, he added on Tuesday.
The man is currently wanted by British authorities for failing to comply with his obligations as a registered sex offender.
The authorities have designated a 24-year-old Latvian who played the role of the bride’s sister at the event as an assisted witness.
The prosecutor said investigations showed the “marriage” was in fact “a fictitious ceremony intended to be filmed privately”.
The Briton is suspected of “recruiting, with the help of a Latvian citizen, other Latvian nationals to ensure the smooth running of the event, as well as around 100 French extras, who were falsely presented to Disneyland Paris as wedding guests”, the prosecutor said.
The Ukrainian child, who arrived in France two days before the event, suffered “no violence, either physical or sexual” and “was not forced to play the role” of bride, the prosecutor had said at the weekend.
According to the prosecutor, Disneyland Paris was deceived, with “the organiser impersonating a Latvian national and using false documents to secure the contract to hire the park”.
The event was scheduled to take place between 5:00 am and 7:00 am local time, outside public opening hours, on the privatised premises “at a total cost of 130,000 euros”, according to a police source who asked not to be named.
But Disneyland Paris emphasised in a statement sent to AFP on Sunday that the event had been “immediately cancelled” by its teams “after the identification of significant irregularities.”
