She Bought the Earrings for 33,900 Euros, and They Sold at Auction for 470: Jordanian Princess Firyal's Housekeeper Goes on Trial

In November 2020, Princess Firyal Irshaid of Jordan's phone rang. On the line was a representative of the jewellery house JAR, with unpleasant news: two pieces linked to her were about to go to auction at Canterbury Auction Galleries. One was a sapphire and diamond ring made especially for her - one of a kind, the sort you don't buy from a shop window.

Six years later, the story is before Southwark Crown Court in London. The defendant is Maria Virgelina Taborda Henao, a 71-year-old woman who worked for eleven years as housekeeper at the princess's London home in Belgravia. She denies the theft.

The timeline set out by the prosecution is simple. In March 2020, as the pandemic was closing borders, Firyal left London and left the house in the housekeeper's care. According to the prosecution, Taborda Henao was the only person with access to her belongings while the princess was out of the country. When police searched her home, they found some of the items Firyal had reported missing: the wedding ring in a coat, a necklace in a kitchen cupboard and an envelope of earrings.

A nephew also enters the story. According to the prosecution, Julián Ramírez, the defendant's nephew, was the go-between with the auction house: he first came to Canterbury in 2019 for a valuation and then handed over several items for sale. He received around 106,000 euros from the sales, and between June 2019 and November 2020 transferred more than 21,000 euros to his aunt. He was arrested and released on bail, and in October 2023 he left for Colombia - and never returned to Britain.

The most telling item is a pair of enamel and gemstone earrings. Firyal bought them at Sotheby's in 2011 for around 33,900 euros. In Canterbury, in 2020, they sold for around 470 euros - more than seventy times cheaper. When jewellery leaves a house without papers and without a story, it loses its price too.

The prosecution says what was recovered is only a small part of what disappeared. When the princess returned to London in May 2021, most of the collection was gone, and what remained was mainly costume jewellery. In court Firyal presented invoices, catalogues and photographs to prove that the jewellery from the auction was hers, and said she would never have given away a piece of such personal significance.

Firyal was born in Jerusalem in 1945, studied at Columbia University, and from 1964 until their divorce in 1978 was the wife of Jordan's Prince Muhammad bin Talal, with whom she has two sons, Princes Talal and Ghazi. She was later linked to Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos and to financier Lionel Pincus. A life between palaces and auction rooms - and when it reaches a criminal court, it all comes down to one question: who had a key to the door. The verdict is still to come.