Sir Philip Green is seeking a gagging order to prevent the full publication of a watchdog’s report that casts fresh light on the BHS scandal.
On Thursday, Green launched a high court bid to stop the Financial Reporting Council publishing its damning report on the failures of the auditors responsible for checking BHS’s accounts.
The Topshop tycoon wants sections of the FRC analysis to be redacted or changed, arguing that references to him and other members of the former BHS management could cause “serious and potentially irreparable harm” to their reputations.
Last week Steve Denison, the senior PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant who audited the BHS accounts ahead of its sale for £1, only a year before the department store chain collapsed, was given a 15-year ban and and record personal fine of £325,000 after he admitted misconduct.
PwC was given a record £6.5m fine but the FRC’s report was not published at the same time.
Andrew Green QC, the barrister acting for Taveta, the retail billionaire’s holding company, told the high court it was not seeking to block the publication of the report, which is primarily focused on PwC’s failings.
“This [goal] can be achieved with a redacted version,” he said. “It is fundamental to bear in mind the gravity of the criticism. The prejudice to those individuals would be severe.”
Charles Béar, the barrister acting for the FRC, said it was not in the public interest to make any changes. “Publication of only part of the FRC’s reasons would be either unintelligible or misleading or both,” he said.
The Commons work and pensions committee, which carried out an investigation into the demise of the department store in 2016, has already received a copy of the report. Frank Field, the Labour MP who chairs the committee and has regularly locked horns with Green over BHS, has been pushing for its publication.
Field, who watched Thursday’s hearing, said outside the court that he would challenge any attempt by Green to modify the report.
“This attempt at a gagging order is also gagging parliament,” he said. “At some stage we will have to come and argue there is a wider public interest than Sir Philip Green’s reputation.”
Taveta is asking for an interim injunction before a judicial review. Mr Justice Nicklin said the hearing had raised “important issues that need to be properly considered” and he would pass judgment as soon as possible.
On Thursday, a leaked email sent to nearly 1,000 PwC partners and written by the firm’s UK chairman, Kevin Ellis, was heavily critical of Denison who, it emerged, had backdated his BHS audit opinion and spent just two hours working on the file.
In the email, Ellis described Denison’s supervision of the audit as “inadequate” with too much work delegated to a junior team member. “This situation should not have happened and we need to face up to the failings and learn the lessons,” he wrote.
