By James Simons-
The fraud trial against three former Tesco directors has been abandoned after the judge was forced to discharge the jury. The reason for the abandoned case was that one of the accused suffered a major heart attack.
Tesco’s former finance director, Carl Rogberg was admitted to hospital last week after a cardiac episode. This led the judge, Deborah Taylor to dismiss the jury in case his illness prejudiced their decision, saying it was not “right and proper” to continue.
The three former bosses faced allegations of fraud and false accounting over a £250m profit black hole at the grocer, which following the revelation in 2014.
Mr Rogberg, John Scouler, former commercial director for food, and Christopher Bush, former Tesco UK managing director, were charged by the Serious Fraud Office in late 2016 over claims that they failed to correct inaccurately recorded income figures.
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All have denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to the charges.
During the trial, which commenced in September after months of delays, the court heard the three men were accused of “cooking the books” by bringing forward income not yet earned to artificially inflate Tesco’s figures.
The discovery of the overstatement led to Tesco’s shares falling by 12pc, wiping £2bn off its market value.
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DISCHARGING
Discharging the jury means that the Serious Fraud Office will now have to decide whether to pursue a retrial, effectively rerunning the case in front of a new jury.
Mr Rogberg’s solicitor Neil O’May of Norton Rose said in a statement that his client would undergo surgery on Friday.
“Mr Rogberg is devastated at the news that the trial has been aborted. He waived his right to attend these last stages after he had given evidence himself for many days, and had participated in the last four and half months of the trial,” Mr O’May said.
“He was always very anxious that this jury should be allowed to reach its verdict and is desperately sorry that they were prevented from doing so.”
Disagreements between, Rogberg’s predecessor Phil Clarke,
Tesco boss, Dave Lewis was revealed to the court in November. The disagreements were about profit targets in the weeks before its accounting scandal was exposed.
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