Meghan’s food waste guru ran the ‘toxic’ payday lender Wonga
A BUSINESSWOMAN lauded by the Duchess of Sussex in Vogue magazine is a former boss of Wonga, the ‘legal loan shark’ firm vilified for preying on desperate borrowers, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
As guest editor of the highfashion magazine, the Duchess introduces Tessa Clarke, who has set up a food waste app OLIO, as someone ‘ you may want to know’, whom she had ‘met with discreetly last year’.
But Miss Clarke spent a year running Wonga, which was known for charging borrowers staggeringly high rates of interest – up to 5,853 per cent – that pushed many of its customers deeper into debt.
In 2014 Clarke – who posed for the latest edition of Vogue in an outfit worth £1,700 – even appeared on television to apologise for fake legal letters the company had sent before she joined, which threatened hardup customers who were struggling to make repayments.
It is not known whether the American Duchess knows or has even heard of Wonga.
But an endorsement from the Duchess could provide a significant boost for OLIO, a start- up technology firm which employs just 14 people, according to company documents filed in February.
It was i n July 2013 that Clarke – then known as Cook – joined the Wonga group as managing director of PayLater, which provided a product similar to credit cards. Before long, she was promoted to become managing director of Wonga’s UK consumer loans business in January 2014.
During her year in the post, Wonga was lending more than £1 billion a year and coming under intense scrutiny from regulators for interest rates of 5,853 per cent. The company was peddling ‘pay day’ loans that were typically paid back within a month – with hefty interest charges, such as £33.49 for a £ 150 loan over just 18 days. Wonga’s l oans were described by one MP as a ‘toxic form of finance’ and another as the ‘worst form of credit anybody could take out’.
In June 2014 Ms Clarke said that before she joined Wonga, staff had fabricated letters f r om f ake l aw f i r ms and sent them in 2010 to clients in arrears, threatening legal action. She apologised for ‘these completely unacceptable practices’. The firm had t o pay out £ 2. 6 million in compensation to 45,000 customers as part of its agreement with regulators.
Later that year, under intense pressure from the Financial Conduct Authority, Wonga cut its interest rate by almost three-quarters but it was still a staggering 1,509 per cent.
However, the clampdown drove down profits and Wonga eventually went bust last year.
On her LinkedIn page Ms Clarke says she ‘kick-started t he t urnaround’ of Wonga before leaving in January 2015.
But it is Clarke’s new business venture that has clearly caught the eye of the Duchess.
OLIO – which says it has more than a million users, called ‘Olioers’ – allows people to share unwanted food with others. It makes money by charging businesses and shops for listing unsold surplus food which is then picked up by OLIO volunteers and listed on the app.
Clarke, who runs OLIO with her business partner Saasha Celestial- One, has said the ‘light bulb’ moment came in December 2014 when packing up her flat i n Switzerland where she had been based when working for Wonga.
She says on her website she ‘got quite upset’ when faced with throwing out ‘six sweet potatoes, a whole white cabbage and some pots of yogurt.
‘I thought to myself “This is absolutely crazy”... Why isn’t there an app where I can share it with someone nearby who wants it?’ And so the idea for OLIO was born.’
In April it was reported the firm, majority owned by Clarke and Celestial-One, had raised £6.25 million from investors.
A spokesman for the Duchess said: ‘The pioneering co-founders of food sharing app OLIO were chosen for their innovative work to help end food waste – because small actions can lead to big change.’
AS TESSA COOK, UK MANAGING DIRECTOR OF WONGA AS TESSA CLARKE, CEO OF OLIO FOOD APP