Former BHS owner jailed for tax evasion

Dominic Chappell, the former owner of UK high street stalwart BHS, has been jailed for 6 years for tax evasion.

BHS collapsed in 2016 just a year after former owner and current Arcadia boss Sir Philip Green offloaded the company in a controversial one pound deal to Chappell’s City investor Retail Acquisitions.

The collapse resulted in the loss of 11,000 jobs and a pension deficit of 571 million pounds.

A Southwark Crown Court jury found Chappell guilty of failing to pay tax of around 584,000 pounds on 2.2 million pounds of income he made as owner of the chain, despite splashing out on a luxury lifestyle which included yachts and a Bentley.

The judge, Mr Justice Bryan, said Chappell had engaged in a “long and consistent course of conduct designed to cheat the revenue”.

The defence argued Chappell was “simply too busy” to sort out his business dealings, and that he could have paid the taxes if the company had not collapsed.

But the judge said: “You were not overwhelmed by your other pressures, and you were not too busy or under too much pressure to spare the time to buy yourself trappings of luxury with monies that would have been better deployed to pay the taxes due.”

Four years after the collapse of BHS, a quarter of its stores remain vacant, according to August research by the Local Data Company (LDC). Just under half of the retailer’s former store estate has been re-occupied, while the rest have been reconfigured or demolished.

Photo credit: BHS Leeds by Mtaylor848, source: Wikimedia Commons, copyright free