Editing Jeffrey Archer (section)

==Financial crisis==
In 1974, Archer was a casualty of a fraudulent investment scheme involving a Canadian company called Aquablast. The debacle lost him his first fortune and left him almost £500,000 in debt.<ref name=Davies/> Warned by ''Daily Mirror'' reporter Revel Barker – whom he misidentified as a fellow Oxford student – that as a [[bankrupt]] he could not be an MP, he announced that he would not be standing in the [[October 1974 United Kingdom general election|October 1974 general election]] "Because of financial difficulties".<ref>The Last Pub In Fleet Street, Palatino, 2015, p. 129.</ref>

While he was a witness in the Aquablast case in Toronto in 1975, Archer was accused of stealing three suits from a department store.<ref>Paul Foot, [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v17/n17/paul-foot/those-suits "Those suits"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140427215233/http://www.lrb.co.uk/v17/n17/paul-foot/those-suits |date=27 April 2014 }}, ''London Review of Books'', 7 September 1995.</ref> Archer denied the accusation for many years, but in the late 1990s he finally acknowledged that he had taken the suits, although he claimed that at the time he had not realised he had left the shop.<ref name=Davies/> No charges were ever brought.