Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis will appear as a witness for the prosecution in a fraud case involving three of the supermarket’s former directors.
Carl Rogberg, the former finance director of Tesco UK, John Scouler, the former commercial director for food, and Christopher Bush, the former managing director of Tesco UK, have all been charged with one count of fraud by abuse of position and one count of false accounting. The three men could face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of fraud and seven years for false accounting.
The allegations relate to accounts records at Tesco which the company said left a hole of up to £326m. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) launched a criminal investigation into accounting practices at Tesco in October 2014.
The charges against Rogberg, Scouler and Bush allege that they dishonestly falsified Tesco’s digital accounting records and its draft interim accounts by the “inputting of and/or reliance upon commercial income figures which gave a false account of the financial position of Tesco”.
Lewis is among 10 witnesses lined up by the prosecution, it emerged at a pretrial hearing on Tuesday. They also include the retailer’s head of internal audit.
The trial will begin on 4 September. Lawyers for all three former directors said they would plead not guilty.
• The Competition and Markets Authority has opened an investigation into Tesco’s proposed £3.7bn merger with the grocery wholesaler Booker.
