By Jessica Yun

Copyright smh

“The truth is Mr Cheston declined Premier’s offer to lead a separately listed Smiggle business and instead resigned to accept a CEO role for another publicly listed retail company. That decision appears to be what Premier is unable to move past.

“Mr Cheston has moved on and Premier should do the same.”

Through his lawyer at the time of his departure, Cheston described the allegations as “false, vindictive and profoundly disappointing” and claimed he’d been “denied procedural fairness”.

Lew said the ongoing investigation was “very serious”.

“There was a whole raft of issues that [allegedly] took place, with people being out of the office in office hours, returning intoxicated, they’d been out gambling all day, et cetera. So obviously, we’ve had investigators looking on this, and it’s almost a miniseries,” Lew said on Thursday.