BHS chief says retailer’s owner Dominic Chappell threatened to kill him

Dominic Chappell, whose company Retail Acquisitions Limited (RAL) bought BHS from Green’s Arcadia Group previous year, said his firm’s ability to successfully build up capital in support of the retailer was undermined by TPR.

The businessman also rejected calls by work and pensions select committee chair Frank Field, MP for the opposition Labour party, to provide the joint committee with further documents relating to the acquisition of BHS. And that, in the words of Darren Topp, the retailer’s chief executive, “rather than putting money in” to BHS, Mr Chappell had “got his fingers in the till”.

MPs then heard about Chappell moving £1.5m out of BHS into a separate entity called BHS Sweden, a loan against his father’s house, and the death threats to Topp, which Chappell later denied.

“Green is like Banquo’s ghost in all this, he was always there – you couldn’t shake him off”, Field told Chappell.

On Wednesday, Mr Chappell claimed to MPs that Sir Philip blocked a rescue attempt for BHS from Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley, favouring instead to plunge BHS into administration.

During the hearing, Dominic Chappell was described as a “premier league liar” who had his “fingers in the till” by former BHS finance consultant Michael Hitchcock. The payment of more than £400 million of dividends to BHS shareholders in the Noughties, most of which went to Sir Philip’s family, has been at the centre of much of the outrage at circumstances surrounding the failure of BHS.

Green was awarded his knighthood in 2006 for “services to the retail industry”, yet leaving the schemes of around 20,000 former and current BHS employees to fall into the Pension Protection Fund may jeopardise this. Mr Chappell refuted the claim, saying it was nonsense.

His Arcadia Group, meanwhile, is being investigated by Britain’s pensions regulator to establish whether it had sought to avoid its responsibilities in the sale of BHS and should be pursued for a contribution to make good the retailer’s 571 million pound pension deficit.

Asked if he had profited out of his ownership of BHS, Mr Chappell said: “Yes, I have made a profit out of this, but I racked up considerable fees”.

Explaining his reasons, Chappell said that his lawyers were not inclined to grant the committee’s requests until they had decided whether a court case could be brought against Arcadia Group in general, and Philip Green in particular.

For his part, Mr Chappell said BHS would have been “saveable”, had Sir Philip assisted the firm.

Efforts to find a buyer for BHS failed earlier this month, forcing the retailer into “an orderly wind down”, leading to the loss of some 11,000 jobs.

The Guardian has uncovered plenty of evidence that Chappell’s business career prior to BHS was not as prosperous as he claimed.

“It was a challenging time and we did challenging things”, he said, referring to Topp’s allegations about the cash transfer.