ELIOT'S GAL A SHARED ASSET
'HOUSE-SITTER' & PARTY PAL TO GOV'S $$ MAN
By LUKAS I. ALPERT and SAMUEL GOLDSMITH
WALL STREET-WALKER: Ashley Dupre, a k a Gov. Spitzer's high-priced hooker "Kristen," was a frequent party guest at Hamptons bashes put on by hedge-fund titan and Spitzer fund-raiser James Chanos (left).
Video of Gov. Gal 'Kristen'Raw Video: Behind the scenes with Ashley Alexandra Dupre during a music video shoot.
March 16, 2008 -- The high-priced hooker who sunk Gov. Spitzer's political career was a party pal of one of his top financial backers, boozing it up with him at clubs and his palatial Hamptons mansion.
Secret Strife Of A Hurt Wife
James Chanos, 50, a billionaire hedge fund manager who runs Kynikos Associates in Manhattan, says he met Ashley Alexandra Dupre - the girl at center of the gov love scandal - at a nightclub several years ago and often invited her to parties, But he denied introducing her to Spitzer.
"I know her. She's a nice person," Chanos said by phone from the Bahamas late Friday night. "She is one of many young ladies I have spent time with around town. I have had her to my home [in the Hamptons], but I never dated her and I never introduced her to Eliot Spitzer. I had no idea she was a high-priced call girl."
Chanos, who was called "Uncle Jim" by Dupre, pumped close to $100,000 into Spitzer's campaigns over the past five years. He is well known on Long Island's East End for hosting weeklong Fourth of July beach parties, to which he invites scores of sultry young women.
During a clambake last summer, Chanos - who is also on the board of Manhattan's elite Browning School - introduced Dupre to other partygoers as his house-sitter.
"I met Ashley there. Jim said she house-sits his house," said Varshini Soobiah, who attended the party and became friends with Dupre, now 22.
"This was a very formal, fine dining event. There were only limos, sitdown dinners, chefs, and fancy rooms for all guests. The girls were staying together. We were always together - changing together, going out together."
Soobiah, who runs an orphanage in India, said it "never occurred to us at all" that Dupre was a hooker, but another attendee - who said she knows Dupre from the Manhattan club scene - said the young woman stood out like a sore thumb. |
