I’M SKINT!

Ex-BHS owner pleads poverty as he’s hit with £87,000 fine over pension scandal. But he’s still paying for private school and a new Range Rover

THE former owner of BHS, Dominic Chappell, has been ordered to pay a £50,000 fine and £37,000 court costs for failing to disclose vital details to the pensions watchdog as part of its investigation into the collapse of the store.

Thrice bankrupt Chappell, 51, bought the High Street chain from billionaire Sir Philip Green for just £1 in March 2015.

The 88-year- old company crashed just 13 months later with the loss of around 11,000 jobs and 164 stores.

The Pensions Regulator ( TPR), which has a responsibility to safeguard pensions, moved to protect the savings of 19,000 members.

Just days after it collapsed they ordered Chappell to hand over hundreds of documents in relation to the £571m pension black hole at BHS. When he failed to comply, TPR charged Chappell with neglecting or refusing to respond to three Section 72 notices to provide information and documents between April and May 2016 and February 2017.

In the first prosecution of its kind, Chappell, of Blandford Forum, Dorset, was hauled before a court last month.

Chappell was found guilty of all three charges and faced a maximum sentence of an unlimited fine for failing to comply with the notices. Yesterday he appeared at Barkingside Magistrates’ Court where he was fined £15,000 each for the first two charges, amounting to £30,000, and £20,000 for the last charge with £37,430.84 court costs. Earlier he told the court: ‘I have no funds as it stands.’

He said there was a perception he had ‘made millions out of BHS’ but he had actually been left almost penniless by the collapse. Alex Stein, prosecuting, said Chappell claimed in a letter handed to court that he had no assets whatsoever other than a share in a property.

Chappell was asked to give evidence in the witness box under oath over his wealth and assets.

He told the court he had a monthly income of around £2,700-£3,000 acting as a consultant to a small cosmetic company. But he claimed he had extensive outgoings of almost £9,000. He told the court: ‘I’m an entrepreneur. It’s the nature of the business. There are boom times and slack times. This is a slack period where I have huge amounts of cash flooding out of the door in relation to legal fees.

‘I have no way of paying a large fine at the moment but I could speak to people to borrow a loan.’

He said he had endeavoured to comply with the TPR requests for information and documents and had spent around £250,000 on legal fees in the wake of the BHS collapse. Chappell – who is also said to have a penchant for Ralph Lauren designer clothes – said last year that he had not seen an initial court summons because he had been offshore on a boat.

The fine comes just weeks after Chappell, a former racing driver, was handed a formal demand for £10m from TPR as it attempts to plug the failed retailer’s pension fund. The TPR has already agreed a deal with Sir Philip Green that he should pay £363m towards the pension deficit.

District Judge Gary Lucie said: ‘He is not being sentenced in any way for the collapse of BHS or the pension funds, just the failure of him to comply with demands over the pension funds.’

He said the court must send a message ‘to those in positions of power’ that a failure to comply to TPR demands will lead to a substantial penalty.

He said: ‘There was a complete lack of remorse on Mr Chappell’s part. The fine should therefore reflect that. In my view there has not been full and frank disclosure of his means. I’m not impressed by the lack of detail.’

Judge Lucie proposed he pay £2,500 per calendar month.

If Chappell does not have the means to pay the fine, it could lead to him being declared bankrupt for the fourth time.

Nicola Parish of the TPR said: ‘We prosecuted Dominic Chappell because, despite numerous requests, he failed to provide us with information we required in connection with our investigation into the sale and ultimate collapse of BHS. Choosing not to comply with our Section 72 notices has now left him with a criminal record and a bill of £50,000 both of which he could have avoided if he had simply done what was required of him.’

After the case Chappell’s lawyer Michael Levy said his client was appealing his conviction on three charges of failing to provide documents to the TPR.