Case Study – Media Campaign – Tesco and The Serious Fraud Office
An acquittal in a high-profile corporate crime case provided Brackenbury Associates with the opportunity to showcase the work of its client BCL Solicitors LLP.
Background: BCL’s head of corporate crime, Richard Sallybanks represented John Scouler, the former UK Foods commercial director at Tesco, who, along with two co-directors, was prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) on two counts of fraud and false accounting and subsequently acquitted.
Objective: To showcase our client’s work when John Scouler was acquitted, and to profile their expertise in the defence of high-profile individuals in cases of serious fraud.
Strategy: We leveraged our relationships with broadsheet and trade journalists as well as broadcast news outlets to achieve our objective. Reporting restrictions were in place, so we could not issue statements to the press until court proceedings ended in December 2018 for two defendants and then again in January 2019 when the third defendant was acquitted.
Results: Our client was quoted in more than 30 high-profile pieces of repeated broadsheet press coverage in the Financial Times, New York Times, The Times, Bloomberg, The Guardian and City AM, broadcast opportunities on BBC Radio 4 Today and BBC News, BBC Panorama and trade press coverage in amongst others, Law 360, Economia, The Grocer, Retail Gazette, Global Investigations Review and Money Laundering Bulletin.
Examples of media coverage:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46459884
https://www.ft.com/content/672fdb88-f949-11e8-af46-2022a0b02a6c
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/06/two-tesco-directors-cleared-of-false-accounting
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/12/06/business/06reuters-britain-tesco.html
http://www.cityam.com/270251/serious-fraud-office-trial-against-tesco-executives
https://news.sky.com/story/ex-tesco-directors-cleared-over-250m-profit-scandal-11573089
https://www.ft.com/content/b6c2b688-1f29-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/former-tesco-executive-carl-rogberg-cleared-of-fraud-dkhm8v69d