'My conscience is clear', former BHS boss Dominic Chappell tells ITV News
On Sunday BHS closes its doors for the final time.
By the time the 22 last remaining stores cease trading, 11,000 people will have lost their jobs and leaving 22,000 staff facing the prospect of less generous pensions in retirement.
Dominic Chappell bought the company from Sir Philip Green for £1 in March 2015 - in April this year it went bust.
Four weeks ago a report by MPs labelled Chappell "incompetent and self-serving" and a "chancer" who "had his hands in the till". Today, for the first time, Mr Chappell has responded.
In an interview with ITV News Dominic Chappell said he was "sorry" and "bitter" about the distress the failure of the business has caused but rejected almost all of MPs' criticism
"My team worked extremely hard to turn this company around", he insisted.
In the 14 months that he owned BHS, Chappell received £2.6 million in salary and "professional fees" from BHS and an additional, interest-free loan of £1.5 million from Retail Acquisitions LTD, BHS's parent company.
Chappell confirmed that the loan, which has not been repaid, had been used to pay off the mortgage on the family home, owned by his father.
Dominic Chappell estimates he personally made "around £1 million" from BHS. He told me he will not return any money and will fight in the courts any attempt by the liquidator to recover funds.
"I earned that money," he told me, blaming Sir Philip Green for BHS's demise.
"We were stitched up this was a company in far worse shape than we thought, Philip did not stand good promises. He told us he would sort out the Pension Regulator he did not.
"He told us he's sort out the suppliers, he did not. The company failed because of those two issues, end of story".
Sunday marks the end of BHS but the joint-liquidators, Duff & Phelps and FRP, are investigating the way the company was run under both Dominic Chappell and Sir Philip Green.
The Serious Fraud Office has been urged to launch an investigation. I asked Chappell if he feared going to prison for what happened to the company. "My conscience is very clear, that we did the right thing, right the way through", he replied.
Back in June Sir Philip Green told MPs that he sold BHS to Dominic Chappell in good faith, leaving £400m in the business to enable a turnaround but they concluded he was ultimately responsible for the company's failure.
At the time Sir Philip pledged to "sort" BHS's £571m pension deficit but hasn't yet spelt out how he will do it.
Sir Philip has spent the last month on one of his boats off the coast of Greece, declining all interview requests.
Tonight sources close to the billionaire told me that "detailed, complex" negotiations with The Pensions Regulator continue but that a final settlement is probably still several months away.