Fashion group Monsoon Accessorize paid its founder more than £30m in dividends last year and is now debt free.

According The Sunday Times, Monsoon Holdings, the company which operates the Monsoon womenswear and Accessorize fascias, received £76.2m in dividends for the year to August 2011.

Of this total, £30m was reportedly paid to Monsoon Accessorize founder Peter Simon while another £44.8m was loaned back to the company to provide funding.

The company is also said to have cleared a £200m loan that Simon took out five years ago in order to take the business off the stock market. The retailer is now debt free.

Despite the dividend, EBITDA at the retail chain for the year to August 2011 fell 12% to £121.4m but sales for the period grew slightly to £650.7m.

Overseas sales rose 23.5% while sales in Britain and Ireland dropped by 4%.

Monsoon Accessorize trades in 69 countries worldwide.