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

[Bradsplit]

In the trial prosecution evidence. Aha.

If CS and NL had declined to be witnesses, then no, the matter couldn't really have gone to court.

Sure, the CPS could have insisted but usually, where a 'victim' doesn't want to be involved, the case isn't pursued (except in DV cases).

And if they were still together would the sisters have scapegoated NIgella"s alleged drug use? I cant imagine Saatchi would have been ok with that ..

IMVHO The sisters have been using the Saatchi credit card for years, and as their expenditure increased, nothing was said by their employers, the accountant simply upped their credit card limit again and again until it hit £100k. You don't have to be a common or garden thief to keep spending, especially if you have no idea you are doing anything wrong, as no-one has told you!!!. It seems that the boundaries were so blurred and they were so used to living in the lap of luxury that it became the norm for them. Twelve years of spending (one sister joined the family in 1999) is a long time to get used to it and having a paymaster displaying an almost contemptuous attitude towards money and accounts would have seemed almost encouraging .After all,Saatchi himself admitted in court that figures on pages "bored" him and that he had no idea how his cards were paid off. More importantly, it seems the sisters were made scapegoats as another assistant, whose expenditure was greater than the Grillos, was not prosecuted!!!! From The Telegraph "Isleworth Crown Court, west London, heard that the sisters were two of five aides to Miss Lawson and Mr Saatchi who had credit cards linked to Mr Saatchi’s personal account. Between them they averaged £100,000 a month. The court was told that Elisabetta, who allegedly defrauded the couple out of £105,000 over a four-year period, spent less on the credit card than Anzelle Wasserman, another assistant who is not under suspicion".

An interesting fact is that Nigella moved out from Saatchi's a year before the Scott's incident, with one of the Grillo sisters:- www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2515338/Nigella-Lawson-Charles-Saatchi-aides-blew-1m-year-credit-cards.html
Are the two sisters just casualties of the divorce, resented by Saatchi for years, who now provide CS with a stick with which to hit Nigella? Nigella has been dragged into it by default maybe, from the Independent;- "Saatchi said Miss Lawson was “very cross” with him when he told her he had confronted the Grillos about their alleged misuse of his company credit card but it was Miss Lawson’s idea to call the police"and the mudslinging has started. I feel very sad for the kids, not only has their home been shattered since the divorce, they have lost two people who have cared for them since they were small.

We don't know enough about it. We don't know if it was 12 years of spending and when the spending started on the Conarco card. And we don't know if the other assistants were offered a deal to repay their expenditure and accepted or why they were not prosecuted.

Or if the other assistant had a higher monthly spend but it was all for the business or family.

I think if the crime had been reported and then CS had declined to be a witness, he might be at risk of a charge of wasting police time.

It doesn't seem likely that the sisters will be able to pay the money back, and the only result can be the washing of the entire household's linen in public (and possibly a tax bill).

There is another very important result. It stops others doing it. The deterrent. I thought Saatchi said other assistants charged much less and just for family matters. I think the point was they were not sanctioned to incur any spending on themselves and knew that but they still did. They might well have resented three rich teenagers being allowed to spend a lot; the teenagers might have booked cabs for their friends on it which is a separate issue but that does not give carte blanche to staff to take. I don't think people are always tempted. Many won't even take a pen as it's theft. Most people in the UK are pretty honest.

Or you could use the cheaper but slightly more boring way of stopping people misusing your credit cards which is to check your credit card bills.

Millions of people check employee expenses every day.

The company accountant seems to have been utterly useless here too. I'd be polishing my CV if I was him.

Summarising the monthly spend and highlighting where true money was spent might have flagged alarm bells if he had had the guts to send emails to CS and NL about the monthly spend on the cards. The taxis might have been hard to work out as I assume the household jumped in and out of them but I think NL would remember spending £10,000 in Chloe, Prada. Regardless of how much money you have, you do remember when you buy a new dress.

saragossa2010 - I would be more interested in the outcome being that employers realise that they need to manage their household staff more ethically and with clearly-delineated boundaries.

I think it would be grossly unfair to point the blame solely at the Grillo sisters.

Managing domestic staff is time consuming and a management job that people aren't really trained for. A friend told me she had worked as a household assistant during a gap year and when her employer used to appear to fuss and say things like ' My dear, you have no idea how difficult it is to manage domestic staff - wait till you have some', she thought the woman was slightly bonkers. When she did actually employ household staff she understood what her employer meant. It seems to me that once you have more than two, the work involved almost cancels out the help they give. I suppose that's what a butler used to do for the rich.

I agree wholeheartedly, slipshodsybil. I think that in the UK domestic staff largely disappeared from middle-class life after WW2 and for several decades most people never had the management of domestic staff modelled to them in their home. In the past 15 to 20 years there has been a resurgence in domestic employment.

Wasn't Virginia Wolf constantly unable to manage her staff?

I don't about VW but I think it's a recurrent problem, judging from what I see around me! There is something inherently complicated about having people who are a lot less well off than you responsible for your children and possessions.

VW wrote about it in A Writer's Diary. I think some of the servants took the pee because they knew she suffered with mental illness.

My ils had a carer who had a credit card. When my mil died, dh went over all of the accounts. She had been spending £250 pw and pil had also been buying food. I asked dh about this yesterday and he said that there had not been anything that they could do about it. He said that giving an employee a credit card was difficult because of the temptation.

I have had lots of stuff stolen by domestic employees. They seem to think that "old" books and DVDs can be "borrowed" and won't be noticed and that food in the cupboards is there for them to help themselves to. I'm perfectly relaxed about people using all the items in our home - they can make telephone calls, use the internet etc. But I don't think that I should have to make it clear that stuff shouldn't be removed from the premises or items from the cupboards consumed unless I have agreed to it. It seems so petty. And yet...

One of the reasons I decided against a nanny was because I knew I'd be hopeless at managing them.

I'd want to treat them like family, but that never works. Everyone becomes too casual. But who would want someone living in their home, who they treated coldly? Awful.

The thing is these credit cards were being paid through the business by an accounts department. Saatchi is an experienced business owner. Signing off employee expenses may not be as exciting as finding the next big thing in art, but it is part of the job.

I know these were domestic employees not company employees, but an employee is an employee.

Well there is a middle way between treating staff like family and treating them coldly but the difference in income gets harder, the closer the relationship and modern families, unused to the idea of staff, feel uncomfortable about it and allow the boundaries to blur until something upsets them and then there is trouble....

Merry, when an employee shares your house or has full access to it, including the contents of your messy drawer, rubbish bins and washing baskets, and (it is to be hoped) loves your children, it doesn't feel the same at all.

Wasn't it Wellington who said 'No man is a hero to his valet'? ??

I agree about it not feeling the same, and I can see that when you share the upbringing of your children with somebody it isn't the same.

However, when the expenditure is itemised on a credit card statement and you employ accountants and you run your own business you aren't really in the same position as somebody wondering if the nanny is over egging the Starbucks expenditure.

why do some posters think they are the MN Ambassadors from Planet Super Rich?

Chortling at this. :)