Tesco bosses ‘aware of damage to firm’

THREE FORMER Tesco executives were “fully aware” they were damaging the business by “conniving and manipulating” the figures in a scandal which wiped £2bn off the supermarket’s total share value, a court has heard.

Carl Rogberg, 50, Chris Bush, 51, and John Scouler, 49, are alleged to have failed to correct inaccurately recorded income figures which were published to auditors, other employees and the wider market.

The supermarket’s former finance chief, managing director and food commercial head, who are charged with fraud by abuse of position and false accounting between February and September 2014, were investigated after Tesco was found to have inflated its profits.

A public announcement to the stock market on September 22, 2014, which stated that it had previously over-estimated its profits by approximately £250 million, sent “shockwaves” through the market, Southwark Crown Court in London has heard.

The jury was told the practice of bringing forward income from the future to artificially inflate the figures of the present “was contrary to proper accounting standards and principles”.

Continuing the prosecution opening yesterday, Sasha Wass QC said: “Terms such as ‘pull forward’ and ‘legacy challenge’ were Tesco’s internal jargon, used by those in the know, to describe the falsification of figures and the problems this created.”

The court heard that by July 2014 Tesco employees had made several attempts to highlight “unrealistic targets”. Rogberg, of Chisel hampton, Oxfordshire, Bush, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and Scouler, of St Albans, Hertfordshire, all deny the charges. The trial continues.