On the go: Dominic Chappell, the director and majority shareholder of the company that bought BHS for £1, has been ordered to pay more than £124,000 for failing to hand over information to the Pensions Regulator.
Chappell failed to provide information that the regulator required him to supply as part of its investigation into the sale and then collapse of BHS, using powers under section 72 of the Pensions Act 2004.
He also failed to provide the watchdog with information about a possible unauthorised disclosure of restricted material. He was first convicted of the offences in January.
Chappell has been ordered to pay a £50,000 fine, £73,900 costs and a £170 victim surcharge.
Judge Christine Henson QC said his appeal was “completely without merit”.
She said that “his refusal to comply with the Section 72 requests caused significant delay to TPR’s task. It made their work significantly more difficult.”
Nicola Parish, the Pensions Regulator’s executive director of frontline regulation, said: “Dominic Chappell has consistently refused to provide the information about the sale of BHS that we demanded, despite the courts being clear that he should provide it.”
She added that “his repeated claims that he does not have to give us what we have been seeking have now been rejected by two different courts”.
“Information notices are a vital investigative tool for us. As this case shows, if you ignore them you are committing a crime and should expect to be prosecuted,” Parish said.
The watchdog’s separate anti-avoidance action against Chappell in respect of the BHS pension schemes is continuing.
