Patisserie Valerie five people arrested

Five people have been arrested and questioned over alleged accounting fraud at the Patisserie Valerie chain according the Serious Fraud Office. The arrests took place last Tuesday, 18 th June 2019, in a joint operation with police, the SFO said. It took eight months after the firm’s former finance director Chris Marsh was arrested and freed on bail. Patisserie Valerie went into administration in January 2019 and was bought for £5m by Causeway Capital. The collapse came in the wake of discovery of a huge black hole in the firm’s accounts. Eventually valued at £94m. After it went into administration, the café chain was found to have overstated its cash position by £30m and failed to disclose overdrafts of nearly £10m.

The café chain had 206 outlets and 3,000 staff when it collapsed and now it has 96 shops still in operation. Causeway Capital, an Irish private equity firm, has said it will revamp the menu and provide new uniforms for staff to boost online sales. Last week, Causeway revealed that Patisserie Valerie was in such dire straits that managers has to resort to order puff pastry made from margarine rather then butter as a cost-cutting measure. This is now reversed. “We will take every single recipe apart and put it back together” Matt Scaife from Causeway.