Kate’s brother and probe into £52,000 credit card payment

THOUGH still only 35, the Duchess of Cambridge’s brother, James Middleton, has already blazed an adventurous trail through the commercial world, founding three companies.

But the Midas touch exhibited by his parents, who’ve made millions from Party Pieces, the business they famously began in their kitchen, has so far stubbornly eluded him.

Regrettably, that’s not all. For I can reveal that just six months after Boomf — the company James founded in 2013 to exploit the market for novelty marshmallows — went bust with accumulated trading losses of almost £2 million, administrators have enlisted legal firm Withers to assist them in investigating ‘ a payment made to American Express UK’ of almost £52,000.

The money was handed over on November 24 — just three weeks before Boomf went into administration.

‘We are obliged to review all the information available to us and conduct an initial assessment of whether there are any matters which may lead to recoveries for the benefit of creditors,’ the administrators record in their progress report, published this week.

The American Express payment, they add, was made by Boomf’s chief financial officer, who explained that she had made the payment ‘solely to protect her personal credit position, as she was named on the card’. One of the administrators, Peter Kubik of UHY Hacker Young, tells me that ‘ certain payments are allowed’ even as a company heads into administration, particularly if they ‘ preserve the value of the business’.

But that was not the case in this instance, adds Kubik, who explains: ‘She [the finance officer] shouldn’t have done it. The creditor should not have received that money and we’re asking for it back.’ The administrators managed to sell Boomf for £300,000. Middleton ( pictured), was enjoying Wimbledon this week with his wife Alizee Thevenet. ‘This is just a usual part of the administration process that certain payments are looked at,’ he tells me. ‘ This is one of them.’