The former BHS owner Dominic Chappell has told a court that workers were seen shredding bin bags of documents prior to his purchase of Sir Philip Green’s doomed high street chain in 2015.

Chappell, 51, said the staff tipped the bags into an “industrial-sized” shredder, which was located in a lorry or a van in the car park of the Arcadia-run BHS offices in London.

Chappell bought BHS from Green for a nominal £1 in 2015 but it subsequently crashed, with 11,000 jobs lost, 13 months later and leaving a pensions black hole of around £571m.



The claims came on the final day of Chappell’s trial for neglecting or refusing to provide information on three occasions – in April and May 2016 and February 2017 – about two BHS pension schemes with a combined total of 19,000 members.

If found guilty the former owner faces an unlimited fine.

In an August 2016 interview with the regulator – read to Brighton magistrates court – Chappell told investigators staff had been seen loading documents into the industrial shredder at the rear of the building.



He said the shredder had been seen outside the back of the offices two days before he bought the company in March 2015. He said he didn’t know about it at the time of the sale.

In the interview he said: “They [staff] were putting bin bags of documents into it.”



It was one of a series of allegations made about Green during the hearing.



Later in the day Chappell accused the pensions regulator of keeping dozens of documents secret in order not to embarrass Green.



He told the court he was prepared to produce those documents in the courtroom as part of his defence but did not give further details.

Earlier in the hearing he said he was “devastated” by the “outrageous, aggressive and hostile” stance of the pensions watchdog after he took over the high street chain. He said he was shocked to receive a demand for documents from the regulator six days after a meeting to discuss a way forward.

“This was a hostile and deliberate act and had a fundamental damaging effect on our business,” he said.

He told the court he was outraged because he had conducted a lengthy meeting with the regulator during the company takeover process to help them uncover details of the massive pension deficit.



He said Green had kept details of a huge deficit “hidden” for more than a decade and he had tried to work out a way the deficit could be managed properly.



“It was a professional, cordial meeting. We made good headway. We had offered them every assistance.”



He told the regulator: “The pension scheme was the albatross hanging over the head of the company.”



But Chappell said his working relationship with the regulator had been good. Of the August 2016 meeting he said: “We got on so well they asked me to be a witness, presumably in the prosecution of Philip Green.”

But he told the court his firm, Retail Acquisitions, became embroiled in a to and fro relationship between Green and the regulator. He said: “We were the ping-pong ball between Arcadia and the [pensions regulator], and they were taking a particularly aggressive stance with us.”

Chappell said he also received an 007-style attaché case from the regulator that contained a solitary “microchip” containing thousands of documents to which he had to comply.



The case continues.



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