Guardian paper apologises to Tesco

Tesco has accepted a formal apology by Guardian News and Media Limited following the paper’s publishing of inaccurate stories relating to the supermarket’s tax strategy.

The newspaper has agreed to pay ‘a sum by way of damages to a charity of Tesco’s choice and a payment by way of costs’.

When Accountancy Age contacted The Guardian for details around figures and the nominated charity, a spokesperson was unwilling to disclose further information.

The reports published in The Guardian were entitled ‘Tesco’s £1bn tax avoiding plan ­ move to the Cayman Islands’ and ‘Every little bit helps: tax free pot of gold at end of Tesco’s rainbow’ on 27 February, 2008.

The Guardian’s apology read: ‘In these articles we reported that Tesco had created an elaborate off-shore corporate structure to avoid paying up to £1bn in UK corporation tax on profits from the sale of its UK properties... we now accept that these damaging allegations were unfounded and should not have been published.’