Trial of former Tesco directors kicks off

Three former Tesco directors appeared together at Southwark crown court in London on Friday on charges that suggest the supermarket giant's 'generals' had pressured staff members into massaging profits in order to mislead the stock market.

Carl Rogberg, the former finance director of Tesco UK; John Scouler, the former commercial director for food; and Christopher Bush, the grocer's ex-managing director in the UK, were all charged with a single count of fraud by abuse of position and an additional count of false accounting.

The three men maintained their innocence and denied any wrongdoing in the matter by entering a plea of not guilty, but if found otherwise the trio could face as much as ten years imprisonment for the fraud charge and a further seven on the accusations of false accounting.

Sasha Wass QC of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) told the jury, "This case amounts to what's called 'cooking the books'."

"The three defendants on trial are not the foot soldiers. The defendants in this case are the generals in a position of trust and had huge compensation packages to safeguard the financial health of Tesco," she continued.

Wass said the former directors "encouraged the manipulation of profits and pressured others under their control to misconduct themselves in such a way that was ultimately misleading".

The charges came as a result of an October 2014 probe launched into accounting practices at Tesco by the SFO which uncovered a £326m hole in the group's books, and eventually wiped almost £2bn off the chain's market value.

The SFO claimed the defendants had falsified Tesco's accounting records, and its interim reports, by "inputting of and/or reliance upon commercial income figures which gave a false account of the financial position of Tesco."

The trial was scheduled to last up to 12 weeks.

As of 1415 BST, Tesco shares were up 1.05% to 187.00p.