Tesco has been ordered to pay £1 million to the office of the UK’s grocery code adjudicator (GCA) to cover the expense of assessing the retailer’s supply chain, which unearthed the malpractice of deliberately delaying payments to suppliers, TheGuardian.com reports.
In total, the assessment cost £1.2 million. The GCA, Christine Tacon, said, "I asked Tesco to contribute this money, which is a sizeable sum for any business."
Tesco's breaches of the supply chain regulations occurred before April 2015, when a new law was passed giving the GCA power to issue fines of up to one per cent of a company’s annual turnover. This means that the retailer does not have to pay a fine for malpractice.
The investigation began a year ago, in February 2015.
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Peter Donnelly. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
