Posted on 2016-04-27 | 05:37

Speaking from his office in Parliament after the collapse of BHS, Roger condemned the current regulatory framework which permits greedy billionaires to asset-strip formerly productive UK businesses to the point of collapse.

Recent figures from the Guardian revealed that former BHS owner Sir Philip Green and his family extracted an astonishing £586m from BHS over 15 years in the form of rent, interest and dividends. Over this same time period, the BHS pension fund went into a deficit of £571m from its original surplus.

Said Roger: “For Green and his family to be rolling in wealth in offshore tax havens while BHS’s hardworking employees face unemployment and the loss of their pensions is utterly disgraceful. While Green orders multiple yachts, the people who really generated this wealth are being left to struggle.

 “It is not acceptable for Green to extract funds of this magnitude—not so coincidentally, almost the same amount that is now missing from the pension fund---and then walk away to a life of luxury. As far as I am concerned, this is essentially an act of theft from BHS employees, and from the taxpayer, who will now have to pick up the bill in the form of unemployment benefits, as well as from other businesses which will also be financially liable through their contributions to the Pension Protection Fund.

“Green will now have to appear in front of a Parliamentary Committee, and is facing calls to give up his knighthood if he does not pay back these dividends. I do not believe that this is sufficient. We should not be asking him nicely to give back these funds which he has seized from his own employees—we should be demanding it, along with stripping him of his knighthood and instigating criminal proceedings for theft, negligence and misappropriation of funds, not to mention tax avoidance.

“The Government should also seriously consider bringing in legislation to prevent similar incidents from happening again. We need rules to be put in place to prevent greedy, unscrupulous people such as Green from extracting huge amounts of money from a business then walking away when the company collapses due to lack of funds. This could include preventing dividends being paid while pension funds are in deficit, and capping the total amount that directors can be paid as a percentage of profits generated over the past ten years.

" Putting in place pay ratios between the highest and lowest paid staff in a business would also help. We also need serious action to crack down on tax avoidance and the use of tax havens, which the Government have been promising for some time but still have not delivered. What is lacking is not effective ways to stop this from happening, but the political will to implement solutions and stop the greed of the super-rich from destabilising our economy.”

“Nor should Green be permitted to hide behind the sale to Dominic Chappell, a former racing driver who had twice been declared bankrupt. Despite BHS’s financial problems, Chappell paid himself a salary of more than half a million pounds, as well as diverting £3m of an £8.4m loan taken out of BHS to four directors, including himself. In addition, the week before BHS collapsed Chappell moved £1.5m out of the store into an unconnected corporate entity. On being asked to return the money, he did so minus £50,000, which he claimed was the cost of changing currencies.”