So it's alleged nigella took drugs with her kids?

[Bradsplit]

In the trial prosecution evidence. Aha.

Could the accountants have been given a lot of leeway and power and discretion by both cs and Nigella?

Werem't they the ones themselves who got the credit card limit extended from something small to £100,000?

He broke rules if he was effectively paying his staff in handbags and taxis without declaring it on their p11d's as any chancellor of the exchequer will tell you.

Clearly the sums got out of hand, but it seems the staff had been enjoying the perks of the job for years with everyone turning a blind eye.

I don't think he was. I think his point is he did not know they were spending on themselves and when he found out he offered them a very reasonable deal but they had got to feel so entitled they refused it and now face jail.

Even if he didn't know, it was his business to know. And the staff were grossly underpaid so it is unlikely he was unaware that they were getting perks.

"I didn't check my credit card bill" is not an excuse accepted by hmrc.

Sara, if the price of the deal was a written admission of criminal guilt, I can see why they didn't take it.

I agree with Saragossa. I don't think 26k a year or whatever with full bed and board and holidays etc is ungenerous at all. These women stole from their employer and abused their position.

And when saatchi offered them a way out without involving the police etc. they were too entitled and deluded to accept. For gods sake Battersea is not such a horrible place to live!

I don't think £26k + board is a small amount of money, but if the unauthorised expenditure was clear to see on the credit card bills its not exactly difficult to find. It sounds as though a certain amount of self tipping had been tolerated for a long time.

Saatchi should sack his accountant pronto - he sounds utterly clueless. If he had done his job properly this would never have happened in the first place.

I agree with merrymouse and Bonsoir that it does seem lax. I don't know what the rules are.

"During cross-examination by Karina Arden, representing Francesca, Mr Gajjar said it was he who authorised the defendant's credit limit, which started off at £25,000.

Mr Gajjar said he increased it to £50,000 in February 2010 and then £100,000 in June 2011 as the defendant kept going over the limit and her card was frozen.

Ms Arden asked: ''So the level of spending, which may be suggested by the Crown to be extraordinary - certainly you and Charles knew about it?''

''Yes,'' Mr Gajjar replied.

Ms Arden went on: ''He knew that a credit limit of £50,000 was insufficient at one point and therefore asked for it to be increased?''

''The details of the figure I don't think Charles was aware of,'' Mr Gajjar said.

Asked why Francesca and Elisabetta, 41, were expected to buy so much for the household, Mr Gajjar said: ''Charles and Nigella didn't generally go shopping like most people do. They would have their personal assistants shop for them.''

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10483355/Charles-Saatchis-accountant-admits-increasing-limit-on-aides-credit-card-to-100000.html

Apparently, Saatchi does not know how the card bills were settled

"The multimillionaire art dealer Charles Saatchi was unsure how credit card bills run up by his personal assistants and totalling tens of thousands of pounds a month were settled, a court has heard.

....

They had been given company credit cards in the name of Saatchi's company, Conarco, for their work as housekeepers and assistants, he said, along with three other personal assistants.

Asked by Jane Carpenter, prosecuting, if he could tell her how the expenditure on the cards was discharged, he said: "I can't … I'm sorry, I don't know." Pressed on the point, he added: "I am pretty certain that the company pays off everything and then bills me and I pay the company back for anything that's personal."

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/29/charles-saatchi-nigella-lawson-assistants-credit-cards

I think anyone would know that a £700 Chloe dress was not acceptable expenditure on your employer's credit card - unless the employer happened to say 'buy yourself a hideously expensive dress and charge it to me'.

I don't know why anyone is defending these women. They are dishonest and when their backs were against the wall they just dobbed Nigella in as a hopeless drug addict.

Bonsoir. He doesnt have to know if he doesnt want to.
His money. His accountants who he is paying.

That also no way means that his accountant is clueless.

Monied people often work in different ways to us ordinary folks.

A £700 Chloe dress. Presumably they have to be visible at some events? Perhaps not.

But Basil, they themselves did not do their own accounts. They had an accountant. They had a really bad accountant, but when your shingle says 'accountant' people expect you to know what you are doing and rely on your judgement where accounting is concerned. It looks as if all the hangers on here operated on the basis that the Saatchi-Lawson household budget was basically a bottomless well of money that could be dipped into at will with no harm done and nobody asking questions. However, the people whose money was being spent so lavishly really should have been paying attention themselves.

I think anyone who works anywhere in a non-professional capacity is at the mercy of whoever gives out references. Speaking here as someone who has had non-professional jobs, including a stint as a nanny. No matter how poorly you are paid, don't ever assume you are entitled to take what is not yours. And if you are not happy with your small salary, get some different qualifications or new skills and move on and up.

Any accountant would know that a £700 Chloe dress given to an employee should be declared as a benefit in kind. However, there is no way that an accountant can tell from a credit card statement who is going to wear a dress.

It's an accountant's job to know the rules, check the details and advise but its not their job to authorise expenditure, particularly where it seems to relate to the saatchi household's personal expenses.

To me it sounds as though the people who should have been checking the credit cards found this kind of thing too boring and the people who should have been alerting them to strange transactions were frightened of rocking the boat. Everybody turned a blind eye.

I think they were just plain dishonest. Plenty of London jobs which are live in would be about £26k plus board. It's a good deal. NL did not have to keep the nanny on when the children were big and these sisters were very lucky she did and made some kind of personal assistant role for them. So they would order things for the family (not supposed to be for themselves) and those sums would be large. The mistake here was increasing the credit limit above £25,000 and no one apparently having responsibility to check who was spending what. Just because you can get away with something does not mean it's not theft. We had similar issues when my father had dementia - was spending authorised, condoned or stolen?

goldigger- yes bonded labour.

If what the papers say are true that the girls were caught out and then given a deal whereby they pay it back on a slighly lower salary. At first they were keen because they admitted they'd done wrong.

Well this was over £1000k - they'd be their in the employ of the cs or ng company rest of their lives surely.

Not great. what if they got a better job - could that debt be transferred?Doubt it.

Anybody is bonded in some way if they steal and are found out.

So yes, bonded labour - that is the defintion.

Not that their employers would like to see it as such. Given the relationships and the length of employment perhaps the employer was trying to be 'off the record' but the end result is akin to bonded labour.

No wonder these women were not keen. Not saying they are right but they'd be beholden to the employer for the rest of their lives to pay it back. Wer'e not talking a few thousand - it's more like a nice big paycheque to a person and their family to have a great big life for a couple of years . They are theives of a big order.

The police should have been involved at the start but it's all so complicated now.

Anybody is bonded in some way if they steal and are found out.

Not true.

It seems that how these two ladies were employed was very lax and it worked for a time and then not. the accountant putting in place a payback scheme seems way out of employment law. If they were exptected to pay back in dribs and drabs within their currenr employment it would take years and years. They might not want to stay years and years.

They are greedy thieves. Just because there was no one checking up on them doesn't give them carte blanche to take whatever they wanted. It's called abusing trust.

I can't believe their jobs required them to spend 76,000 a month on shiny things for themselves.

£30,000 is a tiny, tiny salary for someone who was effectively in loco parentis for three teenagers much of the time, on 24h duty, including on holiday in foreign countries several times a year.

Paris wages for domestic staff are much lower than London wages but you would not find anyone to do that job at that level of responsibility for those wages.

The way to address that is to request a meeting with your employer, bring a reasonable job description with you, as well as a reasonable description of the sort of clothes and accessories (luggage, handbags, ski gear, hiking boots, etc) staff accompanying, supervising and dining with three well-heeled children to the sort of places they might go to five times a year, and ask for a salary that is a more reasonable reflection of the job and the expenses associated with it.

mathanxiety - in a functioning, healthy set up, yes, that is the right way to address the issue. It is not, however, for employees to take on 100% of the management role.

Interesting that people think that wealthy employers expect their employees to enjoy exactly the same luxuries as themselves!

Not really how it works though is it?