Geri Halliwell knew about female staffer before sexting scandal & approved of her working with Christian, insider says
GERI Halliwell was left “heartbroken and humiliated” after hundreds of sexts sent by hubby Christian Horner to a female employee were leaked.
The Spice Girl, 51, touched down in Bahrain on Thursday night just as the bombshell messages began to spread around the globe.
She is planning to be by the Red Bull F1 chief’s side on the pre-race grid for today’s Grand Prix in a public show of solidarity. But sources said last night she has been left “distraught and devastated” over the scandal, which Horner, 50, had repeatedly played down.
The devastating trove of texts sent anonymously to F1 bosses and media outlets confirmed Horner did send inappropriate messages behind Geri’s back, despite being cleared in a Red Bull probe.
A source close to the pop star, who was on a Bahrain-bound private jet when the messages emerged, told The Sun: “Geri is heartbroken and feels utterly humiliated. She trusted him when he tried to play down the scandal.
“He always told her he’d done nothing wrong. This will really hurt Geri, who has put everything into their marriage.”
Meanwhile, The Sun has learned that Geri knew of the female employee at the centre of the texting scandal. A Red Bull insider said she even approved of the woman working in Horner’s team.
Hauled in for crisis talks
It was also claimed yesterday that the employee was “unhappy” after the messages were leaked and believed the probe into his behaviour had been “one-sided”.
A friend said: “We speak every day and she’s very unhappy – of course. In her way of thinking it’s all very one-sided and she has been crucified.”
Horner was yesterday snapped at a practice session in Bahrain with driver Max Verstappen making preparations ahead of qualifying.
He always told her he’d done nothing wrong
Source close to Geri
It was reported that the Red Bull chief – who has won 13 world titles since heading the team as a 31-year-old in 2005 – had been hauled in for crisis talks with F1 bosses. The tension was palpable down in the paddock, with Red Bull team members avoiding mentioning the simmering scandal, other than the odd whisper.
Horner was seen pacing from the hospitality area to the team’s garage, stopping only to check his phone and to sign autographs for waiting children.
An F1 source last night said that Red Bull workers fear there might be more leaked messages to come.
The team boss refused to comment on the leaked WhatsApp sexts. Last night some of the grubby messages were reported, including a request for a “Santa PJ selfie”. He also regularly joked about Spanx, telling the woman she looks “attractive” in them.
In another, Horner starts by asking: “Can I make a confession?” He then describes a trip on a private jet to Dubai where he claims that the woman got him “out of control”.
Pesters woman for photos
She cuts him off by guessing that he had to nip to the bathroom.
He confirms her suspicions and says he would have preferred it if she had been there with him. Horner also pesters the woman for photos. In another exchange, the pair have an innocent discussion about a photo for a travel document. Horner then writes: “You could send me a pic,” followed by a winky face emoji.
At one point the female employee asked her boss how he would feel if Geri were to message someone in the way he was.
I won’t comment on anonymous speculation, but to reiterate, I have always denied the allegations
Christian Horner
Horner also repeatedly asks the woman — who works with him at Red Bull’s Milton Keynes HQ – to delete their chat history.
The woman apparently grew tired of her boss’s pleas for pictures and sexy chat, according to the Whats- App dossier. The leak appeared to be in line with the original accusation over alleged “sexually suggestive” messages sent by Horner.
It was later claimed that the internal inquiry into the team boss was into “controlling and coercive” behaviour towards the woman.
On Thursday, after the messages were leaked, defiant Horner said in a statement: “I won’t comment on anonymous speculation, but to reiterate, I have always denied the allegations. I respected the integrity of the independent investigation and fully co-operated with it every step of the way.
“It was a thorough and fair investigation conducted by an independent specialist barrister and it has concluded, dismissing the complaint made.”
There is no suggestion that pictures featuring sexual content are included in the leaked WhatApps.
Geri, who married Horner in 2015, rocketed to fame in the 1990s with the Spice Girls, whose hits included Stop. She is expected to be with her husband today for the season’s opening race, alongside Thai billionaire Chalerm Yoovidhya, who owns 51 per cent of Red Bull.
Red Bull Racing have declined to comment.
How Christian Horner's shock texts were leaked
By Ben Hunt
IT was an anonymous email sent and designed for maximum impact.
It landed in my inbox almost 24 hours to the minute since Christian Horner was cleared of any wrongdoing following Red Bull’s internal investigation.
Other names included Liberty Media chief Greg Maffei, who owns the rights to F1. The FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem and F1 CEO Stefano Dominacali.
The F1 team bosses were also included for good measure. As was Max Verstappen’s father, Jos.
It was from an anonymous sender, the title was simply the date – ‘Feb Twenty Nine’.
Inside it was a Google Drive link containing 79 files claiming to be the evidence from the independent investigation.
There is no way of knowing if they were real or fake yet irrespectively it sent another shockwave through the F1 paddock before this season had even started.
Horner was sitting on the team’s pitwall during second practice in Bahrain when the email dropped.
After the session, he walked out of the team’s garage and into the hospitality unit where he remained as the nuclear fallout began.
He’d survived the outcome of the internal investigation into improper conduct following a complaint from a female colleague.
One wonders whether he will survive this time after this very public humiliation – again, irrespective if they were indeed real or fake.
Just hours earlier, McLaren’s CEO Zak Brown and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, called on the sport’s governing body, the FIA, demanding transparency.
“I just read the statement, which was pretty basic,” said Wolff. “My personal opinion is we can’t really look behind the curtain.
“There is a lady in an organisation that has spoken to HR and said there was an issue and it was investigated and yesterday the sport has received the message that it’s all fine, we’ve looked at it.
“I believe with the aspiration as a global sport, on such critical topics, it needs more transparency and I wonder what the sport’s position is?
“We’re competitors, we’re a team and we can have our own personal opinions or not. But it’s more like a general reaction or action that we as a sport need to assess, what is right in that situation and what is wrong.
“Are we talking with the right moral approach, with the values based on the speculation that is out there? As a sport, we cannot afford to leave things vague and opaque on critical topics like this, because this is going to catch us out.”
Brown added: “It’s the responsibility ultimately of the organisers of Formula One, the owners of Formula One, to make sure that all the racing teams and the personnel and the drivers and everyone else involved in the sport are operating in a manner in which we all live by.
“I don’t think it’s the teams’ roles and responsibilities. That’s up to FIA and Formula One to ultimately decide and ask what they feel gives them the level of transparency they need to ultimately come to their conclusion and we just have to count on them that they fulfil that obligation to all of us.”
The emailed file will only increase that pressure in the form of scrutiny on Horner – who has always denied the accusations.
It does also put Red Bull in a tricky position.
Should the emailed file be legitimate and have made up elements from the initial report, which had been thoroughly examined and presented by the independent KC, then surely this is nothing new to them and their decision to stick with their team principal remains.
To perform a u-turn on that simply now they have become public would possibly see criticism that they intended to keep their report private to save face.
Whatever the outcome, it is a mess for the world champions.
Reports of a wedge driven between Horner and Verstappen’s father have grown in recent weeks.
So it was interesting that Jos Verstappen was in the paddock and wearing a team jacket and seemed unmoved to the chaos happening around him