The former chief financial officer of the company that owned collapsed bakery Patisserie Valerie has been charged with conspiracy to defraud along with three other people, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has announced.
An SFO investigation, known as “Operation Venom”, was opened in October 2018, just days after the company abruptly suspended trading.
The sudden closure caused the loss of 900 jobs across the country and 70 stores to shut after a £94m hole in the company’s accounts was revealed.
The former CFO of Patisserie Holdings, Christopher Marsh, and his wife, accountant Louise Marsh, were served with charges at their home.
Mr Marsh’s former number two Pritesh Mistry, a financial controller, and financial consultant Nileshkumar Lad were also charged at their respective homes.
The SFO has charged the four with conspiring to inflate the cash in Patisserie Holdings’ balance sheets and annual reports from 2015 to 2018. This included allegely providing false documentation to the company’s auditors.
In a statement, the SFO said that the company also reported holding £28m in accounts, yet concealed £10m in debts from its investors and creditors.
Patisserie Valerie was well known for its cakes on display here in a London shop window (Nick Ansell/PA)— (PA Archive)
Lisa Osofsky, director of the SFO, said: “Patisserie Valerie’s abrupt collapse rocked our high streets – leaving boarded-up shops, devastating job losses and significant investor losses in its wake. Today is a step forward in getting to the bottom of this scandal.”
The defendants will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 10 October 2023.
The latest charges are just one part of a wider investigation into the collapsed bakery chain.
Grant Thornton, the previous auditors of the firm, were fined £2.34m in September 2021 by the Financial Reporting Council.
The auditor was given a “severe reprimand” by the regulator and told it had to report annually for three years to show what efforts it is making to improve its audits and change its culture.
Grant Thornton said the company has invested significantly in audit practice since the scandal.
