Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers request retrial

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Robert Maxwell bought The Mirror Group Newspapers in 1984, and set himself the mission of taking the newspaper past The Sun for sales. Speaking in the BBC Two documentary “The House of Maxwell”, Peter Mueller, Maxwell’s publicity manager, said: “The first thing that happens is he calls the executives into the main executive restaurant at The Mirror, saying ‘I am your saviour, I am a wonderful person’ – he promised everything. “But that morning Maxwell arrived, none of us had any idea the way things were going to be shaken up.

“To be honest, I’d never met a man with a bigger ego.

“Who could blame him? A self-made millionaire, a brilliant businessman, a former MP and to top it all – a war hero.”

Mr Mueller continued: “Sales had been pretty dismal, and he had his sights set on our greatest rival (The Sun).

“We were all right behind him, we wanted to win as much as he did obviously. There was a great deal of enthusiasm for the things he wanted to do.

“The Sun was the biggest selling tabloid, and it was owned by Rupert Murdoch. Maxwell and Murdoch were sworn enemies.”

For seven years the two men slugged it out in a circulation war between Murdoch’s Sun and Maxwell’s Mirror.

The Mirror’s editor at the time Mike Molloy recalled when Maxwell first arrived at the paper he expected to be sacked because he had opposed him getting control.

He said: “We were all grim because he had a fearful reputation. In he came and immediately sat down in the managing director’s chair. It was a demonstration that he was suddenly the new boss. Bob was like a child with a Christmas present.”

Maxwell resorted to strange tactics in order to try and take on Murdoch, however.

He launched a spot the ball competition where players had to identify where the football was in a picture showing an action shot of a game. They were promised if they got it right they would win £1 million.

Speaking about the tactic in 2011, former editor of the Mirror under Maxwell, Roy Greenslade, said: “He took aside the promotions manager and myself and he said ‘between you, I want you to make sure no one can win £1 million’.

“I thought, look no one believes they are going to win these games anyway and I agreed to do it.

“So for weeks, we put the ball in such a place that no one could stand a chance of winning. I hated myself for it.”

Maxwell began buying various media companies around the world to try and compete with Murdoch, but his dream of replacing The Sun as the UK’s biggest paper ultimately failed.

In 1989, Maxwell had to sell successful businesses, including Pergamon Press, to cover some of his debts. In 1991, his body was discovered floating in the Atlantic Ocean, having apparently fallen overboard from his yacht. He was buried in Jerusalem.

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Maxwell’s death triggered the collapse of his publishing empire as banks called in loans. His sons briefly attempted to keep the business together but failed as the news emerged that the elder Maxwell had stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his own companies’ pension funds.

The Maxwell companies applied for bankruptcy protection in 1992.

Speaking to the BBC in 20011, Alastair Campbell, who worked as a political correspondent on the Daily Mirror recalled: “At the time he (Maxwell) was a kind of enormous character not just in newspapers but weirdly part of national life as well.

“The history of newspapers is littered with big larger than life characters who have come along, present themselves in a certain way, have lots and lots of doubts about them but somehow they get through.

“They end up owning newspapers and terrible things emerge. So could it happen again? I am sure it could.”

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