Chappell set to refile accounts, this time with £650,000 loan
FORMER BHS owner Dominic Chappell is poised to file amended accounts for his family firm showing £650,000 of loans previously left out of the figures.
Chappell told The Mail on Sunday the existing accounts were ‘inaccurate’ and needed to be amended. The loans were made by Swiss Rock Ltd, which he jointly owned with his father, at the time he was working on his takeover of BHS.
Chappell acquired BHS for £1 from billionaire Sir Philip Green in March last year, but it went into administration less than a year later leaving £571million of pension liabilities.
Swiss Rock was also liquidated last month owing more than half a million pounds in tax and VAT, according to Revenue & Customs.
Chappell is working with accountant David Rubin & Partners on the accounts.
‘We’re just making sure everything is totally correct and above board, and we will be refiling amended accounts shortly,’ Chappell said.
He added: ‘I didn’t pick it up in the audit. It was right at the time of the acquisition of BHS and I was overwhelmed with the workload and it didn’t get the full attention it probably should have done.
‘My father and I owned the company 100 per cent, so we weren’t defrauding or misleading shareholders – there were no other shareholders or bank debt.’
The new accounts are expected to show the firm was making a loss, rather than the profit recorded in the accounts filed in December last year.
MPs in the Work and Pensions Committee commissioned Prof Prem Sikka of the University of Essex’s business school to investigate Chappell’s finances.
In Prof Sikka’s findings, he said the existing accounts show money owned to the Revenue is ‘in the region of £733,000 and could be higher’. The accountancy professor’s report has been passed to the Serious Fraud Office, as he requested.