E&Y profits from Tesco's Guardian win
Tens of thousands paid to Big Four firm
The Guardian’s £800,000
bill for legal costs incurred during its dispute with
Tesco included £87,000 paid
to
Ernst
& Young, Accountancy Age has learned.
The newspaper was forced to apologise last September after accusing the
supermarket of creating an elaborate off-shore structure to avoid paying up to
£1bn in corporation tax on profits from the sale of its UK properties.
Headlines included ‘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’.
The Guardian subsequently accepted the ‘damaging allegations were
unfounded’.
Editor Alan Rusbridger said this week: ‘It was Tesco’s contention that The
Guardian had made an elementary and obvious mistake. So simple was it that the
bill includes more than £350k for their tax lawyers and accountants to explain
to their own lawyers just what Tesco were up to.’
Tesco media director Jonathan Church said: ‘The Guardian got their
story on Tesco and tax completely wrong. They have agreed to pay costs and we
are now discussing the amounts with them through the courts.’ Ernst & Young
declined to comment.