British man charged over mock Disneyland wedding to child had been investigated by BBC

The British paedophile charged in connection with organising a “mock wedding” to a child in Disneyland Paris is Jacky Jhaj, who was found guilty of sexual activity with two 15-year-olds in 2016, the BBC understands.

Jhaj, 39, has been charged in connection with organising the fake ceremony on Saturday, in which a nine-year-old Ukrainian girl was due to feature as his bride.

He was arrested when police were called on Saturday morning by an actor who said he had been hired by Jhaj to play the father of the bride.

The BBC has previously investigated how Jhaj was able to hire hundreds of children to act as his fawning fans at a fake film premiere in London’s Leicester Square in 2023.

Some of the children, who had been hired from casting agencies, were as young as six.

Teenage girls told the BBC that they had been asked to scream for him and try to touch him, without being told his real identity by the agencies.

Then in June last year, Jhaj was seen giving gifts to children outside dance auditions for another production – he was recognised by a parent who had seen the BBC article.

Two months later, and following the BBC’s further investigation, Jhaj was filmed posing naked in front of a mocked-up BBC News lorry in London which had been set on fire.

For the mock wedding at Disneyland Paris, which was to be filmed by Jhaj’s team, around 100 French extras had been recruited to take part.

The BBC understands that he appeared in front of a judge in Meaux, north-east of Paris, on Monday and was charged with fraud, breach of trust, money laundering, and identity theft and placed in pretrial detention.

Preliminary findings also stated that he had allegedly been “made-up professionally so that his face appeared totally different from his own”, according to the French prosecutor.

Jhaj has been on the sex offenders register since 2016 and has spent time in prison. He is subject to restrictions on his freedoms under the terms of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

Since he was released from prison, he has repeatedly staged productions involving children or young people.

BBC News can reveal that some videos of these productions were uploaded to a YouTube account styled as an official performer’s channel.

The account received more than six million views and had over 12 million subscribers.

A video on a different channel included secretly filmed footage of one of the 15-year-old victims he was convicted of sexually exploiting.

Her family has told the BBC that Jhaj “destroyed” her life and said it’s unacceptable that YouTube allowed the video to be watched for entertainment for four years.

Videos of the productions remained on YouTube for years until last September, when the BBC alerted Google, which owns the platform.

It told the BBC at the time that it takes users’ safety seriously, but offered no explanation as to how an account featuring a man with almost no profile or success had 12 million subscribers, or why the videos were not removed.

Over the past two years, the BBC has spoken to videographers, production assistants and technicians who worked on some of the events before they discovered Jhaj’s real identity.

Their records show that the cost of hiring casts and venues has run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The cost of hiring the area in front of the Odeon cinema in London’s Leicester Square, which hosts red carpet events for major Hollywood premieres, would have run into tens of thousands of pounds.

French outlet BFMTV reported that the fake wedding at Disneyland may have cost organisers more than €130,000 (£110,000).

It remains unclear how these elaborate productions have been funded.

The French prosecutor said the Ukrainian girl arrived in France two days before the Disneyland event – but had not been a victim of either physical or sexual violence and had not been “forced to play the role” of a bride.

The prosecutor’s statement also said that Disneyland Paris had been “deceived” and that the organiser had used a fake Latvian ID to hire the venue. Disneyland Paris can be rented by members of the public outside opening hours.

In a statement, the UK’s Metropolitan Police said:

“A 39-year-old man is wanted by the Met Police for breaching a Sexual Harm Prevention Order and a breach of a Sex Offenders’ Register notification requirement.

“We are aware the man has been arrested in France for other matters and officers are in contact with the French authorities.”