Pandora Papers: As BHS teetered, how Sir Philip and Lady Green went on a property spree

Retail tycoon Sir Philip Green and his wife secretly splashed out on luxury property as a chain of stores they had owned headed for collapse, leaked documents reveal.

The couple spent tens of millions after selling the BHS chain which went bust with a huge hole in its pension fund.

The files, part of the Pandora Papers leak, also show the Greens gifted a superyacht to a close friend.

The Greens declined to comment to the BBC, saying these were private matters.

In a little over 12 months, the entire chain collapsed, leading to the loss of 11,000 jobs and vacant sites in town centres. The downfall also led to an outcry when it emerged the business had left a black hole of up to £571m in its pension fund.

During the 15 years they had owned the company, Sir Philip and Lady Green, and other shareholders, made at least £580m from BHS, according to analysis by the Guardian.

Now, documents in the Pandora Papers leak reveal the Greens embarked on a property buying spree after unloading BHS as it teetered on the brink of collapse.

BHS, one of the most famous brands on the British High Street, was struggling under the weight of its debts in March 2015, when the Greens sold it for a token sum of £1. The buyer was Dominic Chappell, a former bankrupt businessman and racing driver who had no retail experience.

The files show that in June 2015, the Greens anonymously bought a Mayfair flat for £4.95m using an offshore firm.

The company - Amberley Limited, incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) - was used to buy a flat in Balfour Place, Mayfair, a stone's throw from Park Lane and one of Sir Philip's favourite haunts, the Dorchester Hotel. The files identify the beneficial owner of Amberley as Lady Tina Green.

On 30 March 2016, less than a month before BHS went bust, the Pandora Papers show another company owned by Lady Green, BVI-based Hulverstone Investments Ltd, paid £15m for a luxury apartment a short walk away, taking up three floors of a house in Hill Street, Mayfair.

The Greens also paid £10.6m in January 2016 for a new home for their 25-year-old daughter Chloe Green in Belgravia, near Buckingham Palace, the documents show. The anonymous offshore vehicle used to purchase it was Mottistone Holdings, held in Lady Green's name.

The four-storey townhouse was just around the corner from a £7m flat on Eaton Place, also, the files show, owned anonymously by her mother through a BVI company called Bestfalls Limited.

The transactions came after Arcadia, a retail group controlled by the Greens, had paid £53m to buy an offshore company from Lady Green, Wilton Equity Limited. Wilton owned the BHS headquarters at Marylebone House, 129-137 Marylebone Road which it had purchased in 2013 for £31m.

Less than a month after the Belgravia townhouse was bought, BHS collapsed. After a public outcry and months of angry criticism from MPs, Sir Philip later agreed to put £363m into the company's pension scheme to help address the deficit.

At about the same time, Arcadia, which owned Topshop, Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins, ran into difficulty. Sales and profits began to fall in 2017, and the company would eventually go into administration, putting 13,000 jobs at risk.

Commentators criticised the Greens, who had previously extracted £1.2bn from the company, for failing to invest in its stores and online offering to revive its fortunes.

The files reveal that in November 2017, Lady Green gave away a 64-metre, custom-built yacht named Silver Angel to a close family friend and business associate, Richard Caring, handing him ownership of the company that held the boat, BVI-registered Westhurst Partners.

What was unusual about the gift was that Mr Caring had been acting as if he already owned the yacht since 2009, telling the Evening Standard he had just bought himself a new motor cruiser, Silver Angel, which he kept in Naples to cruise around the Mediterranean. It is only now that the files have revealed the yacht was held in Lady Green's name.

Documents in the files show the yacht being acquired in 2009 for €46m and that it was worth approximately €30m (£25m at today's exchange rates) in 2017.

Documents from a previous leak may give a possible clue about why the gift was made. They show that in 2005, bankers noted Mr Caring, a wealthy restaurateur who owns The Ivy restaurant chain, would shortly receive £22.5m in dividends from shares that Lady Green held in trust for him. There was also talk of further dividends to come and the "need to take UK tax advice as to the optimum means for receiving these funds".

In the same year, his bankers discussed Mr Caring getting a new yacht, how it would be acquired and a possible loan agreement.

While there is no direct evidence linking the two, the BBC asked the Greens if the yacht, up until it was gifted to Richard Caring, had been held on trust for him by Lady Green as a tax efficient means of Mr Caring receiving his share of dividends.

Both Sir Philip and Lady Green declined, through their lawyers, to answer detailed questions about the yacht, suggesting that these were private matters. Richard Caring similarly declined to comment.

When contacted by the PA news agency about the claims, Sir Philip said: "I do not own or have never owned any offshore real estate."

The Pandora Papers is a leak of almost 12 million documents and files exposing the secret wealth and dealings of world leaders, politicians and billionaires. The data was obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in Washington DC and has led to one of the biggest ever global investigations. More than 600 journalists from 117 countries have looked at the hidden fortunes of some of the most powerful people on the planet. BBC Panorama and the Guardian have led the investigation in the UK.

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