Revelation of debts in 2018 led to suspension of trading and loss of more than 900 jobs
Four people will appear in court in October after the UK’s Serious Fraud Office charged them in connection with the collapse of UK café chain Patisserie Valerie in 2019.
The SFO, which opened a probe into the bakery in 2018, has charged Christopher Marsh, a former chief financial officer of the high street bakery chain, as well as his wife, accountant Louise Marsh. It has also brought charges against former financial controller Pritesh Mistry and financial consultant Nileshkumar Lad.
Patisserie Valerie suspended trading and closed 70 stores with the loss of more than 900 jobs when its debts were revealed in 2018. It went into administration in January 2019, about three months after it said that its board had been notified of potentially fraudulent accounting irregularities.
The SFO said it had charged all four individuals with conspiring to inflate the cash in Patisserie Holdings’ balance sheets and annual reports from 2015 to 2018.
Lad, Mistry and Christopher Marsh are also charged with five counts of fraud by false representation contrary to sections 1 and 2 of the Fraud Act as well as one count of making and supplying articles for use in frauds, contrary to section 7 of the Fraud Act.
Christopher Marsh also faces an allegation of making false statements as a company director, contrary to section 19 of the Theft Act.
Mary Monson Solicitors, representing Christopher Marsh, declined to comment.
The criminal charges are among the last decisions to be taken by Lisa Osofsky, outgoing director of the SFO. She is stepping down later this month to be replaced by Nick Ephgrave, who served as assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in charge of frontline policing between 2019 and 2022.
Osofsky’s tenure was marred by a number of controversies, notably failings in the SFO’s disclosure processes that led to the abandonment of several criminal trials.
In March, the SFO abandoned a criminal prosecution of three former executives at G4S, the security company, who had been accused of defrauding the government over a prisoner-tagging contract, because of disclosure problems almost a decade after the case began.
In 2021, the SFO also oversaw the collapse of another trial related to prisoner tagging against two former Serco executives after the agency failed to hand key documents to the defence teams.
The collapse of Patisserie Valerie along with other recent cases such as Carillion has led to greater regulatory scrutiny of the role of auditors.
Last June the administrators of Patisserie Valerie settled a £200mn lawsuit with accountants Grant Thornton that alleged negligence in its audits of the café chain. FRP Advisory, which is liquidating the failed group, sued Grant Thornton in 2020 in one of the biggest High Court claims ever to be brought against a mid-tier accounting firm.
