High society drug dealer Alex King — celebrities, expensive cars, royalty and Novichok

From the outside, Alex King and his model wife Anna Shapiro had lives to die for. But after a series of bizarre twists it all came crashing down.

Alex King has lived a fast, colourful life.

Exclusive parties, expensive cars, A-list actors and supermodels — King seemingly had it all. The 42-year-old was so used to rubbing shoulders with Britain’s finest, he once won a $183,000 bet by shaking hands with Prince Charles at a film premiere.

That glittering world came crashing down for King in 2016 when a police raid of his central London flat found two safes containing 90 per cent pure cocaine, MDMA, crack cocaine, ketamine, diazepam.

The street value of the drugs was worth $110,000. Officers found King in bed with his Russian model wife Anna Shapiro, 30.

He and an associate, Baljit Gill, 38, were bailed ahead of a trial in the Southwark Crown court. They were found guilty, with Gill being convicted of conspiracy to supply cocaine and ecstasy and jailed for nine years.

Alex King and Baljit Gill.

Mr King and Anna Shapiro are both missing.

King was also convicted of supplying cocaine and jailed for 11 years. But he is yet to start his sentence and authorities fear he may never spend a single night in jail.

King went on the run before the start of his trial and hasn’t been seen since. The trial offered a glimpse into the sort of world King lived, but the lead-up to it was nothing short of bizarre.

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

The trial heard snippets of details about the life King lived. As well as shaking hands with Prince Charles at the London premiere of The History Boys, co-accused Gill named a series of celebrities King was supposedly involved with. Naomi Campbell, Tom Hardy, and boxer Anthony Joshua were all known to him.

“He knows all the celebrities,” Gill told the court. “He met Tom Hardy and he went to a premiere with him. He owns a private jet, he owns a yacht — he’s got everything.”

Sebastian Gardiner, representing Gill, described King as a “very bizarre” character who lived a “glamorous, albeit seedy, existence”, making money from parties, drugs and supplying high-class escorts to his VIP clients, the Evening Standard reported.

Police are hunting Mr King.

Ms Shapiro believed Russian forces tried to kill her.

Ms Shapiro said her father was a general in the Russian army.

He “craved” attention and was always trying to get pictures with celebrities, he said.

King’s barrister, Leon Kazakos, said he has not had any contact with his client, but indicated he had been living a “flash lifestyle, which has been hired rather than purchased”.

But there was enough evidence to convict both men.

King had taken photographs and videos of himself with drugs, which were found on his mobile phone, while there was a video on Gill’s phone of him driving a sports car and boasting it was a gift from King.

POISONING AND ‘ESCAPE’ BID

King and Ms Shapiro — who claims Russian President Vladimir Putin wants her dead — sparked a major national security emergency when he claimed to have been poisoned with Novichok, the dangerous nerve agent that was used on former Moscow spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

The couple had been eating at a restaurant in Salisbury on September 16, the town where the Skripal’s were attacked.

After the couple were supposedly poisoned, Ms Shapiro said it was probably due to the fact Russia thought she was a British spy.

“I was targeted by Putin’s henchmen. They want me dead as I oppose Putin and have turned my back on my country. Russia is capable of anything,” she told The Sun.

She claimed her father had been a general in the Russian army and that her husband collapsed in the restaurant toilet “foaming at the mouth”.

King was taken to hospital, but was released three days later after doctors found no poison, toxin or obvious reason to explain his symptoms.

Wiltshire Police are still investigating the incident.

His trial heard it was one of a series of attempts at King to avoid the justice he knew was coming.

It is still unclear what, if anything, caused Ms Shapiro and King to fall ill.

Police and other emergency service personal gather outside Prezzo Restaurant in Salisbury where King and Ms Shapiro said they fell ill. Picture: Matt Cardy/Getty

A month earlier the couple had been found by the Coastguard in a boat they had just purchased floating without fuel off the Welsh coast. In court, Gill’s lawyer Mr Gardiner suggested he was trying to flee.

“Possibly he was trying to escape the jurisdiction. Who knows?” the trial was told.

And then, before the trial began, he actually was gone.

Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said King and Ms Shapiro had “absconded”. During the trial she was described as a sex worker — one of a number King managed.

“They were seen by his landlord, the pair of them, loading up the car with their property, both healthy, leaving an address he was living at in breach of conditions and they have not been seen since,” the judge said, according to The Times.

He added: “His behaviour up to the trial date is not relevant to this sentence. It may well be relevant when he is arrested and faces a Bail Act offence.”

Authorities were now picking through King’s fortune and assets to try to determine what they would seize as they had estimated how much money he made through drug dealing.

Judge Loraine-Smith said it was in King’s best interests to hand himself in.

“If the defendant is not here to explain what he owns or doesn’t own, it may not be to his advantage.”

King has so far not taken up the judge’s offer.

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