West End strip club SophistiCats will stay open after allegations of smear campaign against rivals

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West End strip club SophistiCats will be allowed to keep its licence after being accused by a rival of organising a smear campaign against its clubs.

The decision brought to a close the latest chapter in a long-running "turf war" between the Platinum Lace and SophistiCats clubs.

The evidence was laid bare at Westminster Council's licensing committee on Wednesday, April 10, where Mr McKeown’s bid for his SophistiCats clubs to have their licences renewed was objected to by Simon Warr, owner of two Platinum Lace strip clubs in Central London.

Mr Warr accused the owner of SophistiCats of a "conspiracy" of "deceit and subterfuge" to mislead Westminster Council into revoking his own licences.

He claimed at the meeting that the boss of SophistiCats’ two branches in Soho and Marylebone enlisted a journalist and two dancers in a smear campaign against his business in October 2015.

Mr Warr said the dancers accompanied the reporter to film him touching a dancer at Platinum Lace in Coventry Street near Piccadilly Circus. The dancers were also allegedly used to "distract" the club’s security staff and prevent them from intervening in the incident.

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The allegations against Mr McKeown, were made in a dossier lodged by Mr Warr, containing details of other "orchestrated" incidents.

His evidence included leaked emails, which he argued were proof of Mr McKeown’s involvement in the plot to undermine him, but which Mr McKeown claimed to have "never seen".

But the committee decided Mr Warr’s evidence was "insufficient" in proving Sophisticats had breached any terms of its own sexual-entertainment-venue licences.

Its chair, Councillor Melvyn Caplan, told the committee: "Our decision is that although very many things have been presented to us, they are not things we are going to rely on to refuse the licences.

"We’re not passing judgement that these allegations are not serious or concerning. I’ll finish this by saying. I’m not going to tell people how to run their business, but this is not the forum to air disagreements. We will grant the licence."

The committee heard from the council’s own officers who had visited SophistiCats on March 31.

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"We made two unannounced visits to Brewer Street... the premises was found to be well-run and in accordance with the licensing objections," the officers said.

Mr Warr’s allegations were made after he hired Tony Nash, the former Met Police borough commander of Newham, as a private investigator to look into his suspicions about Mr McKeown.

Another accusation Mr Nash and Mr Warr levelled at Sophisticats was that the club had hacked into other businesses’ websites using "Russian malware" and programmed them to redirect viewers to the website for SophistiCats.

Mr Warr said in his evidence: "SophistiCats is using malware to create illegal backlinks from their domain. This illegal hack requires programming script to be embedded into the SophistiCats website coding.

"The backlink allows SophistiCats to gain unlawful access to unconnected organisations and companies ...which improves their own SEO to the commercial detriment of competitors."

Mr Mckeown’s barrister Michael Bromley-Martin QC called the list of allegations "immoderate" and "extraordinary".

He said: "Platinum Lace is a sexual entertainment venue which has continually breached the conditions of its licence. I would say that they were lucky to have retained their licence ... I ask you to accept Mr McKeown’s motivation for trying to highlight evidence of breaches of conditions by other clubs."

The decision made by Westminster’s licensing committee was originally due to take place in February, but the hearing was adjourned to allow the council, and Sophisticats, to sift through and respond to Mr Warr’s stacks of evidence.

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