Chelsea advised Ashley Cole's mistress Ann Corbitt on how to stop infidelity claim

By Ian Gallagher, Katie Nicholl and Sharon Churcher

A message for Ashley? As Cheryl Cole arrives at a Los Angeles recording studio this morning, her t-shirt read 'I left my heart in Beverly Hills'


Club PR emailed girl Ashley met while on tour in Seattle

Cheryl tells him: Be out of the house when I get back

Mistress Ann Corbitt says 'I think he's got a problem'

A senior executive at Chelsea Football Club advised Ashley Cole on how to silence allegations over his infidelity.

The club’s head of media Steve Atkins sent an email to political aide Ann Corbitt – the fourth girl linked to the England defender – detailing a course of action for keeping their encounter secret.

The readiness of the club to involve itself in the affair will anger Cole’s wife Cheryl, who is telling friends their marriage is over and has given the player an ultimatum to be out of their marital home when she returns from working in Los Angeles.

Mr Atkins also suggested that Miss Corbitt contact Schillings, a law firm at the centre of the controversy over the use of court gagging orders to prevent the public knowing about wrongdoing by sports and showbusiness figures and businesses.

Schillings was behind the disastrous ‘super injunction’ that led to the sacking of Cole’s team-mate John Terry as England captain over his affair with Vanessa Perroncel, the former girlfriend of fellow England defender Wayne Bridge.


PR advice: American political aide Ann Corbitt


Miss Corbitt, 28, claims she slept with Cole in a hotel in Seattle after meeting him in a nightclub during Chelsea’s pre-season tour of the US last year.

In an interview with the News Of The World she revealed she hadn't known Cole was married, and refused his requests for a second liason after she found out.

'When he rang me and cried I asked him "What's wrong with you? Why do you cheat? Why did you have sex with me behind your wife's back?"

'But he just replied that he didn't know. He admitted that he'd cheated on her before and been exposed in the press. He was most vehement that I was the first person he'd cheated with... since the last time he got caught.

'I think he's got a problem.'

Days after her liason with Cole, Miss Corbitt ‘panicked’ when details of the liaison were put to her by a newspaper journalist, who confronted her at home.

After declining to comment, Miss Corbitt – a policy adviser to one of Seattle’s most powerful Democrats – is then alleged to have rung Cole’s mobile phone.

He tried to reassure her that she had ‘nothing to worry about’ and, according to friends, passed the phone to Mr Atkins.

But before doing so, Cole, 29, is said to have told the girl: ‘He [Atkins] knows everything that happened and knows what to do.’

Next, there was an exchange of emails between Mr Atkins and Miss Corbitt which started with the PR chief – a former deputy Press secretary at the British Embassy in Washington – asking where she met ‘the boys’.

She replied that it was at a nightclub called Amber. It is not far from her home in the city’s chic Belltown district.

At the time, Cole and his team-mates were celebrating Chelsea’s victory over Seattle Sounders.

A friend said: ‘Ann and Ashley hit it off straight away and they spent most of the rest of that evening by each other’s side. They both had quite a bit to drink and were in high spirits.’


Advice: One of the emails sent to Ann by Chelsea's Steve Atkins


Later, Cole is said to have taken her to Seattle’s Four Seasons hotel and Miss Corbitt, who is single, left the next morning.

Soon after the initial email exchange, Mr Atkins outlined a proposal aimed at suppressing a possible story.

Friends of Miss Corbitt, whose father is a wealthy property investor, have shown The Mail on Sunday copies of the emails which are dated July 22, 2009.


Emails: Chelsea's Steve Atkins advised Ann on how to proceed


In one, Mr Atkins urges Miss Corbitt: ‘You should be able to back the newspaper off by asking a lawyer to put the paper on notice with a letter along the lines of: “My client is disgusted by the behaviour of paper and journalist as they are trying to bribe her into lying about Ashley Cole.

'That the version of events they put to her were untrue. Our client did meet Ashley Cole with friends, was not alone with him and has not now, or at any time, had any form of a sexual or other relations with him.

'This is not only defamatory, but a gross invasion of our client’s privacy and having discussed this with her family she will take action unless the newspaper confirms they will not publish these falsehoods, which may be aimed at Ashley Cole, but also affect our client by their nature.”’

Finally, Mr Atkins suggests that should Miss Corbitt or her lawyer feel ‘further advice or action is required you should contact Gideon Benaim at “Schillings”.’

He said the law firm was ‘well versed in this sort of case and will be best placed to offer advice’.

Miss Corbitt said she was horrified by the extent to which Chelsea Football Club colluded in her liason with Cole.

'The following morning [after their night together] Ashley asked me if I wanted someone from Chelsea to walk me out the back of the hotel.

'God knows how these players' wives and girlfriends must feel.'


Hotel meeting: Ashley Cole is said to have spent the night with Ann Corbitt


Mr Atkins insists that both Cole and Miss Corbitt had told him they had not slept together.

However, she would have known, if she had followed his advice, that she was making a false statement.

Had this statement been made to a court, which Mr Atkins appears to consider in another email as a possibility, she would have been committing perjury.

Mr Benaim was ‘partner of the year’ in the 2008 Lawyer Awards and specialises in ‘reputation protection’ for high-profile individuals and leading business entrepreneurs.

The disclosure that a Chelsea official was involved in an attempt to prevent details of Cole’s infidelity becoming public is likely to further embarrass the club’s billionaire owner Roman Abramovich. At the behest of the Russian oligarch, senior executive Ron Gourlay ordered a team meeting to demand the players’ behaviour improve.

Friends of Miss Corbitt say she appears to be torn between her ‘serious’ side and the restless and potentially damaging streak which is believed to have led to her one-night stand with Cole.

She grew up in Bellingham, a picturesque town framed by snow-capped mountains that overlooks a bay 90 miles from Seattle. Academically, she was a high-flier, gaining a place at Bellingham’s prestigious Western Washington University to read communications and politics.

After working for a Washington State senator, she became a fundraiser for the United Way, one of America’s largest charities, before taking her first major step up the political ladder in 2005 when she came to the attention of Tom Rasmussen, Seattle’s first openly gay councilman.


Home sweet home: Cheryl has told Cole to get out of their Surrey mansion before she returns


He put her in charge of his constituency relations office. She is now his chief policy-making adviser and also clerk of the influential transport committee he chairs, overseeing multi-million-pound projects.

In her free time, she ‘enjoys travelling the world and keeping up on the Seattle restaurant scene’.

When The Mail on Sunday contacted Miss Corbitt to discuss the allegations, she refused to comment and referred all inquiries to media expert Max Clifford.

Mr Atkins, who is believed to be in his late 30s, joined Chelsea in 2008 from the British Embassy in Washington, where he held the post of deputy Press secretary.

Last night he said: ‘On the summer tour, a player asked me to help a woman who said she had been approached by a reporter regarding allegations that she had slept with that player. She and the player denied those allegations to me and she asked for advice as to how to proceed.


Angry: Cheryl Cole, seen in Los Angeles, has told her family her marriage is over


‘Acting in good faith of those denials, I told her to hire a lawyer who would probably advise her that, through them, she should deny the allegations and indicate that she would take appropriate action if the false allegations were published.’

Cole, meanwhile, has been told by his wife Cheryl to leave the marital home by the time she gets back from LA. The 26-year-old singer, who has pointedly chosen not to wear her wedding ring all week, is said to be devastated by claims that Cole cheated on her with Vicki Gough, a 30-year-old secretary, the latest in a string of alleged infidelities.

Cheryl is understood to have consulted divorce lawyers in the UK while she has been in LA and it is expected that the couple will announce their marriage is over ‘in a matter of weeks’.

According to friends close to the singer and X Factor judge, Cheryl has told her family and friends that she believes more women will come out of the woodwork and that their marriage is beyond repair.


source: dailymail