Guardian paper apologises to Tesco
Tesco accepts The Guardian's formal apology for publishing misleading articles about its tax affairs
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.’