London lawyer John Cooper accused the queen’s police officers responsible for protecting the British Royal Family of trading pornography, handling firearms while drunk, and taking steroids. He also accused them of having sat on Queen Elizabeth II’s throne in ludicrous poses. The allegations have been passed in a London court.

According to the British Press Association report, John Cooper is the lawyer of former royal protection officer Paul Page, who is currently accused of defrauding friends and colleagues for funding an expensive lifestyle. Cooper’s claims were made during an extensive cross-examination of Page’s colleague, Adam McGregor, who left the royal protection service at London’s Buckingham Palace in 2005. McGregor accused Paul Page of conning him out of thousands of dollars.

Cooper implied at one point that there was a practice among armed officers at the Buckingham Palace where one officer would sleep while the other officers were supposed to keep watch for the superior officer. McGregor denied Cooper’s suggestions and said that he had no knowledge of this practice or any wrongdoing happening among his colleagues at the Royal residence. When pressed, however, McGregor admitted to sitting on one of the thrones but said that he did not recall doing any of the “comical poses” alleged by Cooper.

In the hearing, the officers assigned to protect the royal family also allegedly lost more than 250,000 pounds or 365,800 US dollars, to a betting venture called “The Currency Club.” This spread betting venture was apparently only one of the various profitable sidelines that Page set up to help clear his spiraling debts. It was said in the report by the BBC that Page was able to extract around 3 million pounds or 4.4 million US dollars from about fifty-seven different investors and lenders.

Cooper accused McGregor as one of the police officers who were using mobile patrols to deliver the cash to the other police officers who were assigned in Royal Protection and were involved in financial matters. Again, McGregor denied this accusation. Instead, he claimed that he had been totally duped or “sucked in” by Page, saying that Page was a very charismatic person. McGregor also added that he had acted very stupidly and naively in some of his dealings with the former colleague.

The prosecution trying Page said that most of the money that was ill-gotten by Page was immediately laundered by Page’s wife Laura before it was gambled away. Prosecution also claimed that Page hid his dishonesty behind a mask of credibility, creating a show of a fleet of expensive cars and claiming that he was a highly qualified market speculator and property developer.

Age 37 and a father of five, Page is from Essex in the south-east part of England. He denied five charges against him—one of intimidation, two of fraudulent trading, and threatening to take revenge and threatening to kill sometime between January 1, 2003 and March 30, 2007. Page’s wife Laura, 42 years of age, also denied being a part of the arrangement of facilitating dealings with criminal property, as well as threatening to kill and intimidation.

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