This reads like the CEO told everyone they had to come back to the office, but it evidently they were not being paid enough to want to put up with that, so they quit and then the CEO decided to go with the narrative that all the employees must have been moonlighting rather than face up to it being a bad gambit to have tried to force everyone back in.

Remote salaries have absolutely rocketed up in the last few year – especially for mid and senior developers, or people who are good self-starters.

Going into an office costs a lot more and uses up more of people's personal time, easily equivalent to working a full extra day a week, if your commute time is around an hour or more.

In London, to out over a remote job, an in-office role had to to be paying £10-20k a year more than a similar fully remote role *just* to cover the difference in costs to me (travel, lunches, workwear, etc) not counting that I would also be spending 10-15 hours a week of my own time on commuting to go in every day.