The ousted chief executive of Tesco is to be interviewed by the Serious Fraud Office over the supermarket group’s £326 million accounting scandal.
Philip Clarke, who left Tesco last year after a series of profit warnings, is to be interviewed under caution, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the investigation.
Kevin Grace, Tesco’s former commercial director, and Chris Bush, the former head of UK operations, have also been summoned for interview, the news agency said.
Mr Clarke, 55, was sacked last October after three years in the job because of disappointing sales and profits.
He was replaced by Dave Lewis, a former Unilever executive, who almost immediately raised the alarm over suspect numbers, saying that first-half profits had been overstated by £250 million.
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Nine senior executives were suspended or sacked. The overstatement was later put at £263 million, with problems said to go back to 2012, and upgraded again in April to £326 million.
The scandal and shareholder dissatisfaction also resulted in the departure of Sir Richard Broadbent, the chairman, and Ken Hanna, the audit committee chairman. The investigation centres on rebates paid to Tesco by suppliers and the timing of when they were booked as profit.
The Financial Reporting Council has launched a parallel investigation into the auditing of Tesco by PwC, going back to 2011.
The SFO is investigating Tesco and individual executives. David Green, director of the SFO, has said that he expects the Tesco investigation to be completed by the end of the year.
There has been speculation that the prosecutor may settle with the company using a US-style non-prosecution agreement.
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Carl Rogberg, the former UK finance director, has already been interviewed by the SFO, Bloomberg reported.
Mr Clarke worked at Tesco for almost all his adult life, having started as a shelf stacker while a schoolboy, before taking a degree in economics at the University of Liverpool.
He joined the Tesco management training programme in 1981 and joined the board in 1998. Mr Clarke succeeded Sir Terry Leahy as chief executive in 2011.