Top chef victim of £1m wine scam

One of the world’s top chefs who was found dead earlier this month was part of a ‘fine wine ponzi scheme’ that left him in serious financial difficulty, it has been claimed.

Benoit Violier (pictured) was found dead by police at his home in Switzerland earlier this month. The 44-year old, whose three Michelin-starred restaurant, l’Hotel de Ville in Crissier had recently been named the ‘world’s best’, had shot himself with his hunting rifle.

Swiss magazine Bilan has since claimed that Violier was the victim of a wine scam that put him in serious financial troubles.

The scheme was said to have been concocted by Private Finance Partners, based in Sion. It sold rare wines worth thousands of pounds to various wealthy clients but failed to deliver them, with certain bottles being sold three or four times over in some cases.

Private Finance Partners was declared bankrupt on November 30 last year and one of its brokers reportedly taken into custody the month before.

Bilan added that the scam had left Violier’s restaurant with losses of £554,700 to £1.3m.

The claim was however, absolutely denied by one of the restaurant’s shareholders, André Kudelski, who told The Telegraph that “the restaurant had no issues with the company in the [Bilan] article and did not lose any money.

“The restaurant was absolutely not touched and the Violier family had nothing to do with this affair.”