Former Patisserie Valerie chief financial officer among four charged with fraud

The former chief financial officer of the company behind bakery Patisserie Valerie has been charged with fraud alongside three others, including his wife.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said that it had charged Christopher Marsh, Louise Marsh, who is an accountant, with conspiracy to defraud, as well as Mr Marsh’s former number two Pritesh Mistry and financial consultant Nileshkumar Lad.

The SFO accused the four of “conspiring to inflate the cash in Patisserie Holdings’ balance sheets and annual reports from 2015 to 2018,” it said on Wednesday.

This included “providing false documentation to the company’s auditors”.

The SFO said that the company had reported holding £28 million in its accounts, but did not tell investors and creditors about £10 million in debts.

The SFO’s investigation was launched in 2018 into a case that saw the bakery chain tumble into administration with a £94 million hole in it accounts in early 2019.

The company and many of its shops were later bought out of administration by Causeway Capital Partners, an Irish private equity business, for £5 million.

The move safeguarded around 2,000 jobs and many of the company’s shops, but around 900 were lost.

Accountants at consultancy giant KPMG concluded that, among other things, the bakery had overstated how much it was owed by others and understated how much it owed.

Grant Thornton, which had been Patisserie Holdings’ auditor for more than a decade was fined £2.3 million by the Financial Reporting Council in 2021. The audits had “missed red flags,” the FRC said.

SFO director Lisa Osofsky 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.”

Lad, Mistry and Mr Marsh were also charged with five counts of fraud by false representation, and one count of making and supplying articles for use in frauds.

Mr Marsh faces a further charge of making false statements as a company director.