30 March 2017
Tesco has agreed in principle to pay a financial penalty of nearly £129m plus costs as part of a potential deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has confirmed. A hearing will take place on 10 April before Sir Brian Leveson QC, to decide whether the DPA is to be approved. The announcement follows an SFO investigation into allegations of false accounting by Tesco Stores to inflate profits by £263m. The DPA does not address whether liability of any sort attaches to Tesco, or to the company’s employees, agents and branches.
