Two staff charged after propping up deceased chief executive at company gala for three days
Two junior employees at a regional investment firm have been charged with fraud after propping up their chief executive, in sunglasses, at the company's annual lakeside gala for the better part of three days, reportedly to avoid cancelling the weekend and to keep a major client relationship “on track.”
The executive, Roland Fenn, 61, is understood to have died of natural causes on the Friday morning of the retreat. The two employees, both in their twenties, told colleagues throughout the weekend that he was “resting,” “extremely relaxed,” and, on one occasion, “asleep, sort of, with his eyes open, which is apparently normal for him at this stage of his career.”
Guests interviewed since describe dancing near him, seating him at the head table for Saturday's dinner, and, in the case of one senior partner, being given “a genuinely excellent toast” by Fenn on Sunday evening, which has since emerged to have been delivered by one of the two employees, standing directly behind him, in a voice several guests now describe as “not that similar, in hindsight, but nobody wanted to be the one to say something.”
The firm's insurers have opened an investigation. Asked why they didn't simply tell someone, the two employees offered, through their lawyer, a single joint statement: “We just didn't want to be the ones who ruined the weekend.”