Timeline: The Maxwell scandal
1969
DTI inspectors appointed to investigate Maxwell’s publishing house Pergamon.
1970 Coopers’ John Walsh appointed to audit Maxwell’s main companies
1973 DTI inspectors say Maxwell could not be trusted to exercise ‘proper stewardship’ of a publicly quoted company
1984 Maxwell buys Mirror Group
1988 Maxwell buys book and journal publisher MacMillan
1990 Ill-fated audit of Maxwell’s main companies undertaken; Maxwell attempts to disguise financial collapse of empire using secret ‘loans’ from Mirror Group pension fund
1991 Mirror Group floated
1991 Receivers appointed to Maxwell’s personal estate
1992 DTI inspectors appointed to investigate MGN flotation
1995 Collapse of trial against Maxwell’s sons Kevin and Ian
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1996 Walsh dies. Complaints against him dropped
1998 JDS reveals complaints against four Coopers’ partners for their 1990 audit of Maxwell’s empire
1998 Price Waterhouse, and Coopers and Lybrand merge to create the world’s largest accountancy firm
1999 PricewaterhouseCooopers receives record fine from JDS for shortcomings in Coopers’ audit of accounts
1999 Coopers & Lybrand agrees to pay out £67.6m in settlement toMaxwell creditors
2001 DTI publish investigations into Mirror Group Newspapers