Tesco's sues Guardian over tax avoidance claims

Tesco has commenced legal proceedings against the Guardian newspaper for libel and malicious falsehood concerning its tax affairs.

The claim is that the Guardian knowingly misled its readers in a series of articles and a podcast and had wrongly alleged that Tesco had contrived a tax avoidance structure involving a series of joint venture partnerships held largely offshore to avoid paying up to £1bn of UK corporation tax on sales of its UK properties.

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