Serious Fraud Office and Tesco

Tesco Shareholder Claims: The revelation is another blow to Tesco, which is under intense scrutiny and investigations by the Serious Fraud Office, the Groceries Code Adjudicator and the Financial Reporting Council, according to The Independent. Last month chief executive Dave Lewis dumped the company auditor of 32 years, PwC, for failing to spot the accounting scandal that saw the supermarket commercial division notching up profits from supplier payments before they had been received. He will advise the various institutional investors who have been signed up by the Tesco Shareholder Claims group and a formal claim is expected to be filed later this year. An internal report by Freshfields and Deloitte found that £263 million had been misstated over at least the last three years, although this figure was revised up to £326 million last month as further discrepancies were found in the supermarket Irish business. David Scott, managing partner at Scott + Scott, said: Tesco committed serious violations when it overstated its profits. The TSC, along with British law firm McGuire Woods and US attorneys Scott + Scott, which are filing a similar claim on behalf of US shareholders, claim the scandal wiped between 50p and 70p permanently from the value of the shares, meaning the total bill could be as high as £1.9 billion. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.