Tax-dodging former BHS owner jailed
FORMER BHS owner Dominic Chappell has been jailed for evading more than £500,000 in taxes on income from his £1 deal to buy the failed high street chain.
The 53-year-old’s offending was an “egregious example” of cheating the public revenue, Southwark Crown Court heard, with the businessman spending a fortune on a luxury lifestyle.
He was jailed for six years for evading VAT, corporation tax and income tax owed on his £2.2million income from the BHS deal.
In November 2019 Chappell was banned from running a company for 10 years, with the Government’s Insolvency Service saying he had carried out “reckless financial transactions” and “failed to maintain adequate company records”.
In January this year, he was ordered by The Pensions Regulator to pay £9.5million into BHS’s pension schemes. His jailing comes more than four years after the Southport branch abruptly closed down and as the landmark building finally appears to have a future use.
Plans submitted to Sefton Council last month could see the upper three floors converted into 30 apartments. Meanwhile, a second application is expected to result in the ground floor being split into six commercial units, one of which is expected to be a pub.
The application, submitted by Liverpoolbased JSM Company Group, states that there is ‘limited prospect of [the building] being used under its current class in the immediate future’ and that the creation of homes would increase footfall and create further demand for the remaining town centre businesses
Sefton Council will decide whether to grant planning permission for the conversion.