Newspaper piece

Taylor doesn't measure up

Tyndales boss on accountancy rap

Reprinted from The Manchester Daily Tribune.

This undercover expos? is my first ever piece of freelance journalism
and, having just completed it, I really wish I had picked an easier
first project. Barry Taylor, 56, the beleaguered chief executive of
Tyndales, the Liverpool based high street retailer will face a motion
of no confidence from the eleven board members on Thursday of next
week. To add to his woes, accountancy practices within the company
during his administration are the subject off a criminal investigation
instigated by the Ombudsman and the crown prosecution service in the
light of evidence supplied by this reporter. The dramatic news of the
no confidence motion was revealed in a leaked memo on Monday. The memo
also states that the investigation and PR will have a considerable
impact on the financial future of Tyndales and that job losses are
inevitable. The news has shocked and angered shop floor staff at the
chain, which has an annual turnover of ?13m. Graham Brown a spokesman
for Unison has said that his trades union is seeking legal advice on
behalf of retail staff at the company. So far, senior executives at
Tyndales have been unavailable to comment.

My involvement with Barry Taylor started with a conversation that I
overheard in a city centre Bar in Salford, where I was interviewing a
notorious former street fighter for a magazine piece. The Bar, which
will remain nameless in order to protect the identity of my sources, is
well known locally as a centre for organised crime and protection
rackets. Whilst waiting for my interviewee to arrive I heard Taylor's
name mentioned as a financier in the course of a conversation about
cocaine distribution in the northwest of England. My interview subject
did not arrive that evening but while I waited, I overheard enough
information to decide that Taylor's activities were worth
investigating.

The next day, I approached The Manchester Daily Tribune with a proposal
for an undercover expos? and gained my commission. In order to gain
Mister Taylor's confidence, I engineered a meeting with him through a
contact at St Andrew's golf course, Scotland. Married, Taylor was
charming, courteous and friendly. We had a drink together during which
I indicated to him that I was between jobs and gave him a fictional
career history. Taylor told me that he was keen to employ a new
personal assistant and indicated that he could "rig" an interview for
me. During the conversation, he hinted that he was offering his help
conditionally. I sidestepped his advances, telling him that I was
amenable but that I would have to get to know him better first. As we
were saying goodnight, he told me to attend an interview at his office
in three days time. I attended the interview and was offered the job
immediately with a start date two days later.

On my first day at the office I met Anne, another member of Mister
Taylor's secretarial staff. I found her abrupt and, on occasion, rude.
Anne made it clear from the moment of our first meeting that she did
not trust me and would be keeping her eye on me at all times. It was
very obvious that her relationship with Mister Taylor was more than
professional and in matters of business they were as thick as thieves
to the exclusion of all others. As an undercover journalist on my first
assignment I was naturally wary of anybody who may blow my cover so the
first day in the office was made all the more daunting by the constant
presence of Anne. On two occasions I was discovered crying and had to
concoct a cover story about the death of my brother in a car crash.
People in the office were very sympathetic and I felt awful having to
lie to them. All through the day I worked diligently and kept a low
profile in order to allay some of Anne's relentless suspicion. I made
no attempt to access potentially sensitive information in the files for
fear of turning around and finding her breathing down my neck and I
studiously avoided looking down at any documents on desks when speaking
to Taylor and the other members of his staff. At one point Taylor
patted me on the bottom as he passed. I wondered if his wife knew that
he behaved this way towards his female staff but tried to act as though
I was taking it in good spirits. I was surprised to see Anne glaring at
me from over by the filing cabinet- little did she know that as far as
I was concerned she was welcome to him. Three quarters of an hour
before the working day ended I overheard Anne saying to Taylor "I'm
telling you she's dangerous Barry. She's up to something.

The next day, I was called to Taylor's office. When I entered, Anne
was there, standing behind Barry (seated). Anne did not say anything
throughout the meeting but stood and scowled at me throughout. At first
I thought that I had been rumbled but it turned out that a high value
invoice had gone missing and they knew that I had dealt with it the
previous day. After a heated exchange, I found the invoice and admitted
that I had filed it incorrectly on account of my unfamiliarity with
company procedure. The matter satisfactorily resolved, Taylor cracked a
smile and glanced significantly at Anne. I breathed a sigh of relief,
but Anne gave me a penetrating stare that suggested that I should not
relax just yet.

Later that day there was a phone call to the office, which Anne
answered. She seemed anxious as she took the call and immediately
afterwards she said to Taylor 'That was the Dutch. They are having
problems.' On hearing the news, Taylor became agitated and after a
brief and cryptic discussion he and Anne left hastily. Left alone in
the office I struck up a casual conversation with Stacey, from payroll
in order to find out more about Taylor's personal finances. I mentioned
to Stacey that Taylor had a nice car and that it must have cost him a
lot of money. Stacey was very forthcoming and went on to tell me that
Taylor had fitted a new indoor swimming pool at his home in Aughton in
January at a cost of ?40,000. She also told me that he had bought two
new horses for his daughter's at a cost of two thousand each and that
he had then had to rebuild the stables for a ?20,000 sum in March. I
casually asked her where she thought he got the money from given that
an expenditure of ?62,000 on luxury items alone is excessive for the
first half of the year. Stacey agreed that the money could not have
come solely from working for Tyndales.

The next day Taylor did not arrive in at work until twelve o'clock and
in the meantime I had to field off a representative from one of
Tyndales' sportswear suppliers with whom Taylor had arranged a meeting
for 9:30 am. When I went through his diary with him, Taylor seemed
evasive about his movements but apologised for his absence explaining
that he had one or two urgent matters to attend to. Anne had also been
conspicuous by her absence that morning for while she had arrived at
her normal time, she had spent much of the morning using the shredder
in Taylor's office and had left instructions that nobody should disturb
her.

Things settled down in the office later that day and Anne went back to
watching me like a hawk. I quietly got on with my work and tried to
make it plane that I was showing no interest at all in confidential
documents. Towards the end of the day, Taylor called me to his office
for a meeting to set his diary for the next three days. I noticed a
change in his attitude towards me. He was very stiff and formal and he
made no attempt to touch me or to brush up against me when passing. He
seemed to have become suspicious of me and, whilst he remained polite,
he refused to be drawn on subjects that were not concerned with work. I
needed to regain his confidence so I surreptitiously unbuttoned the
second button down on my blouse and made great play of eye contact and
open body language. I felt that Barry's guard was coming down so I
played the dumb secretary card and told him of my conversation with
Stacey. In this regard I tried to massage his ego and at the same time
to divert him from his suspicions about my undercover activities by
appearing to be a gold digger. This ploy worked well for a while and
Taylor talked extensively about his luxury home. I felt that I had
tapped into that rich seam of big-headedness and vanity that Taylor had
shown throughout our acquaintance so far. His mood changed rapidly when
I feigned awe and rhetorically asked him where he had got all that
money. At this, Taylor became very formal again and seemed quite angry.
He told me to get out of his office and said that we would finish his
schedule tomorrow morning. As I was leaving his office he asked Anne to
go in for a chat.

The conversation between Anne and Barry became heated and I overheard
snippets. I heard Taylor saying "Find out what she's up to?" At one
point, I heard Anne saying, "Well what are we going to do about the
Dutch? If they find out, they'll probably blow the whistle." As she was
leaving his office, I heard the phone ringing on Taylor's desk and she
waited in the doorway while he answered it. When Taylor came back to
the doorway a minute later his face was white. He said to Anne "That
was them. We have to sort this out right now." They left in a hurry but
before they went Taylor looked around him helplessly before giving me
the keys to his office with the instruction to shred some documents
that he had left on top of the invoices files and to lock up before I
left. The documents seemed unimportant: memoranda to all staff that he
had clearly decided to cancel. I shredded the documents as requested
and used the opportunity to look through the filing cabinets for any
evidence illegal activity. I did not have time to make an extensive
search and I found nothing irregular in the files.

The next morning, Taylor seemed to have adopted a friendlier attitude
towards me and was back to his usual chauvinistic self. We went through
the schedule and he asked me to tell all key office staff to prepare
for the annual audit that was due to take place that day. I duly
informed all staff and then set about the business of preparing for the
audit. Later that day, when the accounts auditors arrived I showed them
into Taylor's office and he greeted them with a confident smile and a
handshake and I returned to my duties. As the audit progressed Taylor
seemed to become stressed and many of the office staff were called into
the office and questioned. Eventually, I was called to Taylor's office
during my lunch break. The auditors asked me if I had seen some
invoices, which Taylor claimed had gone missing. I told them that
dealing with invoices was not part of my job description and that I had
no cause to access the invoice files. Satisfied, they told me that I
could go. When I returned to my lunch, I spoke to Stacey who told me
that a rumour was circulating that the auditors had discovered a
?83,000 discrepancy in the books that could not be explained. I later
emerged that a ?43,000 lump sum was missing from the figures for
January, approx ?19,000 had gone in March and ?21,000 was missing from
the expenditure for August.

When I returned to the office, two members of the board informed me
that Taylor was no longer on the premises and that all of his office
staff were to take the rest of the day off. They told me that auditors
were investigating serious financial irregularities and that the matter
may have serious repercussions for jobs at the retail chain and that
the police may become involved. As we were leaving the building, Stacey
told me that Taylor had bought his car in August. Tonight, Barry Taylor
is facing grave concern over his future at Tyndales.