The Grillo case (AKA Nigella & Saatchi)

[BerylStreep]

So the last thread on the Grillo case is full.

I have taken the liberty of starting a new one here for people's thoughts as the case unfolds.

If they weren't submitting expense forms etc, then it has to be seen to be company policy that expense forms weren't required. Again it is up to the employer to make an issue out of this surely?

Once again we are back full circle to CS charging his life to his company and his accountants sitting back and watching it all happen but never acting on it.

Until the month following a fateful night at Scotts?!?!?!

becool Is it the employer's responsibility?

I'm self-employed and every remittance tells me that they're making full disclosure and my tax liability is my own.

Not arguing. I just don't know.

I wonder if CS has to give them their clothes and handbags back now?

I don't know my tax liability for 'benefits' unless my employer give me the form (P11?) declaring the benefits I have been paid by them.

Yes employers must provide a summary of benefits & expenses paid to employees and directors via P11D

It is the employer's responsibility to fill in tax forms correctly and it is the employee's responsibility to pay tax.

P11d expenses are usually collected through a tax code, but it usually takes a while for this to catch up with what has actually been received as the P11d form is completed annually. This is why so many people on PAYE found out that they had underpaid tax recently. They still had to pay the tax.

Even if your employer messes up his side, you are still supposed to declare all your income on your self assessment form (even if you aren't sent one).

God help them if HMRC do come after them. We have insurance covering the disruption and financial cost of an investigation should one be instigated as a random check and tax matters are an area where we are never slap dash as neither of us could cope with the anxiety.

Agree you don't know how much your P11d expenses should be unless you are told by your employer - you are assessed on the cost to your employer, not the market cost (e.g. if you have health insurance). You are still liable for the tax though.

Poor Nigella, I feel so sad for her. She's been so dignified through this whole thing. I've always admired her as a cook (and for her unashamed greed when it comes to food!) but also as a very brave woman who has had a sad life. She's been through such dreadful losses and they just seem to have made her even more determined to celebrate the good things and the finer things in life. She strikes me as someone who fights hard to be happy and I can relate to that.

I'm glad she knows that lots of people are on her side

I do hope HMRS chase CS as employer up and down and through as well.

What a total ...

It would serve him right if he was liable for the tax as well.

Also wtf is Trinny doing with him? Launching herself to the Z list celebrity circuit again?
I wonder is she calculating how much of him she has to tolerate many fag breaks she has to share with him to get a career relaunching magazine exclusive, or a deal with the a grillo sisters on celebrity love island, or whatevs.

#teamNigella

HMRC will, without a doubt, come after them. They are also, totally unemployable now.

This will have zero impact on Nigella's career in the US. Americans really don't care evidenced by George W Bush. He took coke before being voted in as President. No one had problem with it.

Heck Martha Stewart went to jail for 2 years and returned to her career. It can be done, but not with an evil ex who is set out to distroy you.

IMO there are so many holes in the story of the two assistants that I can't believe anyone bought it. What Nigella said in court make sense. I thought bringing up the children was awful and I think the judge is at fault for allowing it. It isn't relevant that CS doesn't like one of the children?

Nigella's co presenter Antony Bourdain is an ex heroin addict who cruised the shooting alleys of 80's NYC and wrote a book/made a career out of it.

No worries for Nigella. She is the Virgin Mary in comparison.

Hope the taxman has a ball with the 3 of them ...... Saatchi and the Grillos.
Don't care either way re Nigella. I don't condone drug taking- hoists judgy pants . But to take advantage of NL's generosity and spend like that is utterly disgusting.
I still can't understand how Saatchi put so much of his personal and household expenditure through his company.
Us plebs couldn't do that. The revenue would be over us like a rash.
In Ireland tax exiles are lauded in the media when they hold golf pro- ams for charity etc. but those of us resident and paying taxes can't decide where we want our (tax) money spent.
Sugh..... the rich are different.
Rant over.

I really struggle to see someone saying "sure, keep quiet about my drug habit and have £600k".

I have seen this kind of defence before. Many years ago, a high ranking person in a company I used to work for was accused of fraud. There were company cars that did not exist, ghost employees on the books etc. His defence was that the company wanted to give him an extra reward for hushing up various things that they were doing. The amount concerned was several hundred thousand. Again the jury bought it.

Is this a fairly common defence on the basis that it is hard to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that it did not take place?

This is what I don't get - it was CS's company's cards. So how was it NL's generosity? How was NL responsible for the costs on those cards? How was she every allowed to be called as a witness? Unless she was a director of the company?

I hope she gets some big lawyers to look at the entire judicial process re this case as something just doesn't fit right.

Saatchi says he paid every penny that was personal back to the company though. He has always maintained that.

NL is saying rightly that her children had no chance of a defence and I agree. If I were they either say nothing or else put out a detailed lawyer checked statement setting out their own positions as they were very often mentioned in court and had no right of reply.

I thought that protection from libel / slander suits only applied in the course of providing evidence in court.

If the Grillo's go ahead and give 'exclusives' and repeat some of their allegations outside of a court setting, it is, I believe, still libel.

I wasn't remotely convinced by the panic attacks.

Mary,

But did he pay them back pre or post when he knew these financial arrangements would come under scrutiny?

Any paper doing their story will be very mindful of libel beryl. Nigella won't get much joy there.

I agree with you about the panic attacks.

Maybe it might work for Nigella. I feel very well-disposed towards her, but DH is always telling me that I can't judge people by my own standards.

But I hope she does well.

Saatchi surely hasn't come out of this well, has he? But I suppose it won't damage his business and he doesn't care about anyone's opinion, and I suppose that was his calculation.

Nasty, nasty person.

If you are a normal every day self employed person you are advised not to mix your personal and company bank accounts. I suspect the reason the family expenses were put on the the credit cards were

1. It sounds as though Saatchi didn't like dealing with the minutiae of every day life. It would have been easier for his accountants to manage his credit cards if they were on a company account rather than a personal account.

2. I suspect he employed accountants and finance staff who didn't feel able to challenge him when he did things that were questionable from a tax/accounting point of view.

I really struggle to see someone saying "sure, keep quiet about my drug habit and have £600k".

Particularly in the sense of "have £600k if you keep quiet about my drug habit, lovely employee who I feel is just like a member of the family".

or "have £500K more recent employee, but only have £100K employee who supported me and my young children through the awful traumatic death of my first husband."

If you found out a member of your family had a drug problem, wouldn't you try to help them, not think "wow, I always wanted a really expensive hand bag!!!!!".

Very hard to prove that NL made the Grillo sisters an offer. Hard for NL to prove that wasn't the case either, but since they relied on the quid pro quo defence then I think she would be justified in trying to recoup from them their ill gotten gains -- I don't know if a civil action is possible in a case like this but I have an idea the standard of proof is looser for civil cases than if a criminal case were brought.

The financial assistant who was fired (now the owner of an art gallery) was supposed to go over the statements and assign each line to a certain category of expenses, so it's possible this was what he used to repay certain expenses to the company, and this seems to have been an ongoing method of keeping money moving around over the years. This may have been ok depending on what sort of incorporation CS's company has, though I imagine the revenue commissioners will be rolling up their sleeves and sharpening their pencils even as we all type..

IIRC, the drug secret/wild spending relationship was only introduced as a defence many months after the Grillo sisters were initially charged, which leads me to conclude they were clutching at straws. CS's email (motivated by personal animosity towards NL) that claimed he believed every word the Grillos spewed on the subject of NL and drugs actually hurt him financially in the end.

I suspect the guilty secret defence is only used when someone has a personal axe to grind and/or is encouraged by someone with an axe to grind, or is really desperate to get away with what they have done.

Maybe dragging NL through the mud was worth it to him in the end though...