My battle with mobile phone ‘bully’ billionaire
Former partner lifts lid on £15m fight over‘tax dodging, expenses fiddling and lie detectors’
THERE was a time when she looked upon him as a mentor and friend, a father figure even.
He was, after all, the charismatic business hero whose backing sent her financial career soaring, a man who is godfather to her daughter and about whom she delivered a heartfelt speech at his lavish 60th birthday bash at Blenheim Palace just three years ago. She even wrote – and read out – a poem.
Today, Nathalie Dauriac-Stoebe still has much to say about her former business partner, Phones 4U billionaire John Caudwell, but not much of it is complimentary.
The scales, she says, have fallen from her eyes. Because, as we have seen this past week, the professional union between the two has ended in spectacular bitterness, which is now due to play out in the theatre of the British courts.
Ms Dauriac-Stoebe has accused Mr Caudwell of improperly avoiding VAT at their joint firm, Signia Wealth Ltd, which invests money on behalf of a stable of super-rich clients. She says she has been cast out of the business she ‘sacrificed four years with her children’ for, had her shares seized for a token £2 and is left in professional limbo, unable to work in her field.
She claims Mr Caudwell told her to take a lie detector test and that she needed psychological help, and urged her to sign a pre-written confessional letter more befitting an episode of Game Of Thrones than the boardroom of a leading finance house. In short, she says he is a ‘bully’ who owes her an estimated £15 million in shares and has made her life a living hell.
Mr Caudwell, meanwhile, accuses Ms Dauriac-Stoebe of fiddling £33,000 in expenses and – a particularly serious charge in the world they occupy – of losing money at Signia Wealth.
Both Ms Dauriac-Stoebe and Mr Caudwell vigorously deny the claims made against them in almost every detail, most of which have been set out in court documents ahead of the legal battles to come.
Neither side, for the moment at least, is willing to back down.
Today, French-born Ms DauriacStoebe, 38, has set aside the caution and discretion that became second nature as she rose steadily upwards in the finance industry. Finding herself unable to work in her specialist field with such serious charges hanging over her, she is determined to set the record – as she sees it – straight.
She offers an account not just of the finance industry with its tough deals, but of the business practices and character of Mr Caudwell himself, a working-class hero worth an estimated £2billion.
When I meet Ms Dauriac-Stoebe at the home she shares with Konrad, 40, and their two children – Juliette, four, and Theo, two – in Hampstead, London, there is little sign of the strain that the past couple of years must have taken on her. She looks immaculate in a skirt suit, her striking features framed by a curtain of expensive highlights.
True, she appears unusually focused, determined to prove her detractors wrong. But it soon becomes clear there is a sadness in what has taken place.
‘I never thought John would do this to me,’ she says. ‘I was very close to him. I spoke to him most days. He was like a father figure for me. I promised him I would work like a dog for him and I did. I gave him so much of my life and my family life. The fact he can do this to me today is painful.
‘Frankly, our relationship was perfect until I raised the issue of VAT avoidance. Now, his only aim in life is to destroy me.
‘Paying me what he owes me in shares is nothing to him,’ Ms DauriacStoebe adds.
‘I made him £30million the year I left the business, so why would he care? It’s an obsession. He’s a bully. He’s been bullying people all his life. I was warned many times.
‘I’ve been through so much hell over this, but I’m not going to give up. He thought I would do what everyone does in his life: what he wants. He has underestimated me.’
Ms Dauriac-Stoebe was the youngest client partner at the Queen’s bank, Coutts, when she met Mr Caudwell. She had encouraged him to invest in the private office she had set up. ‘He gave us £300million to invest. He gave the same amount to five banks but we were the best performer,’ she says.
Clearly impressed, Mr Caudwell founded Signia Wealth with Ms Dauriac-Stoebe in 2009. They both invested £300,000.
Mr Caudwell was already well known, an entrepreneur whose no-nonsense appearance on BBC documentary Trouble At The Top in 2002 is still remembered today. He has since become richer and more famous, a household name known for glamorous consorts, a lavish Mayfair mansion estimated to be worth as much as £250million, and huge donations to charity. He is also well known as someone who can’t abide those who shirk their responsibilities to the Inland Revenue.
In 2009, Ms Dauriac-Stoebe says, she was young, ambitious and wanted to make a difference. In the first year, the firm had £1 billion under supervision. By year four, that figure had rocketed to £2.5billion.
‘The business was making money and everything was happy days,’ she says. Even her pregnancy did not seem to disturb the smooth running of business.
‘I called him up and said, “John, I’m scared to tell you this, but I’m pregnant”. Of course I was scared. Everyone is scared of John. To be fair to him, he was very supportive.’
After giving birth to Juliette in 2011, Ms Dauriac-Stoebe was back at work within a week and Mr Caudwell agreed to be the girl’s godfather.
The trouble started in October 2014, when Signia’s financial director approached her with a problem.
‘He said, “Nathalie, we’re not going to do what we just did again.”’
Ms Dauriac-Stoebe says she asked him what he meant and he replied that it was the arrangement he had reached about VAT. The details of the allegations are complex. Put simply, Ms Dauriac-Stoebe accuses Mr Caudwell of falsifying two invoices in order to avoid paying VAT.
Mr Caudwell denies falsifying invoices, claiming that Ms DauriacStoebe had in fact condoned a legitimate arrangement at the time and suggesting her subsequent complaint is artificial, aimed at exploiting his strong views on the importance of paying tax. Ms Dauriac-Stoebe says she raised the issue with Mr Caudwell’s colleagues. ‘They were wishywashy to begin with, telling me it was all fine and not to worry about it,’ she says. ‘Now, he is trying to say I knew about it but my job was not to look at invoices. I’m not an accountant. When I realised it was problematic and unethical, I immediately decided to address the issue.’
Just weeks later, after being given 24 hours to prepare three years of expenses for inspection, Ms Dauriac-Stoebe was accused of fiddling £33,000, using company credit cards for holidays and foreign shopping trips. She denies this.
‘About 70 per cent of the expenses were to go and see John on his request,’ she says. ‘They weren’t holidays. We did in excess of £1bil-
I never thought that John would do this to me
lion worth of deals for him during these trips.’
She says meetings took place on Mr Caudwell’s yacht in the Seychelles and the South of France and at his ski lodge in Colorado. She admits there was one ‘honest’ mistake: ‘There is £132 of expenses that I should have paid myself. It was for chocolates for my obstetrician.’
Mr Caudwell also accused Ms Dauriac-Stoebe of incompetence and being an under-performer, despite the fact, she says, that she personally made £30million for the company in 2014.
‘Three months before this, John also guaranteed me a yearly bonus of £300,000 for the rest of my life with him. Why would he do that if I was an under-performer?’
On a cold November night in 2014, Ms Dauriac-Stoebe went to Mr Caudwell’s mansion in Mayfair to see his now ex-partner, Claire. The pair were due to go to a party.
‘John said, “You’ve stolen money from me, I’m going to report you to the police”. It was the first time he had spoken to me like this in his life. I couldn’t believe he could do that after all I had done for him.
‘I remember sitting on the pavement outside his house crying, with John shouting. It was devastating.’
The next day, she was escorted to the office by two of Mr Caudwell’s executives. ‘It was then that they discovered no money was missing and they had been mistaken.
‘They then changed their mind over that weekend. They told me they would start a full investigation. I was still managing the business. I didn’t sleep for two months.’ Just days later, she was once again summoned to the Mayfair mansion, this time to take a lie detector test. ‘It made me feel bullied and abused. I felt it was a tactic to humiliate me and force me to resign. As a woman, I felt extremely stressed by the forcefulness of the accusations.’
MS DAURIAC-Stoebe claims that, extraordinarily, Mr Caudwell then demanded she sign a confessional letter. He also offered to help find her psychological help and, she says, later wrote in a text message: ‘I absolutely believe you’re ill and need help.’ Mr Caudwell says he wished to support her as a close and long-standing per- sonal friend, according to tribunal documents. ‘The letter said that I was sick and that I had stolen money from him. John said he had written it up for me and unless I signed it, he would report me to the Financial Conduct Authority, which would mean I’d never be able to work in the industry again. I felt disgusted that after so much dedication and sacrifice, I was rewarded with such lack of respect. It was so sudden and brutal. I felt very intimidated.’
A week before Christmas, Ms Dauriac-Stoebe was suspended from the firm. ‘They told me I was fired but gave me a letter saying that I was suspended.
‘The next day, I woke up and my resignation was on Sky News but I hadn’t resigned. I was fired unlawfully and bullied out of the company while being robbed of shares worth an estimated £15 million. I felt abused as a woman and taken advantage of at a time when I had recently given birth to my son.’
Ms Dauriac-Stoebe officially resigned from Signia in January 2015 and started employment tribunal proceedings asking simply for the value of her shares.
This was halted when Mr Caudwell launched a civil lawsuit in the High Court last year, accusing her of stealing money from the firm. Ms Dauriac-Stoebe counter-sued and a hearing is set for next year.
Ms Dauriac-Stoebe said: ‘I don’t believe I’m the only person he’s done this to, but I’m the only person who has fought back.
‘I will fight this with every resource I have.’