30 October 2014

It gets Serious

You don't suppose people might go to jail?
The Serious Fraud Office has launched a formal criminal investigation into accounting practices at Tesco, which led to a £263m profit overstatement at the UK’s biggest retailer.
The inquiry, which was confirmed by the watchdog on Wednesday will supercede an investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the City regulator which has been halted with immediate effect. It is not clear whether it will affect the launch of an inquiry by the accountancy watchdog, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), which is also being considered.
The question to which I would like an answer is this: while Tesco were cooking the books artificially inflating their profits (allegedly), what were their auditors, PwC (formerly Price Waterhouse Coopers) doing?

  

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