SFO’s £6m bill for Tesco trial

THE Serious Fraud Office blew £6.2m of taxpayers’ cash in a failed attempt to prosecute three former Tesco directors over its accounting scandal.

SFO chiefs brought fraud charges against Chris Bush, John Scouler and Carl Rogberg over a £250m hole in the supermarket’s accounts, revealed in 2014.

But its case against the men collapsed when a judge dismissed the evidence as ‘weak’. The SFO appealed, but this was also dismissed. It left them nursing a £6.2m bill including £2.6m spent on legal fees. Tesco announced in September 2014 that a statement the previous month had overstated profits by about a quarter of a billion pounds.