No more than 10 fraudsters at Ahold
retail group, yesterday admitted for the first time that the
'accounting irregularities' announced earlier this year had in fact
constituted fraud, and that it believed that no more than five to
10 people had masterminded the affair.
Speaking at the company's AGM yesterday, outgoing chairman Henny de Ruiter said that several dozen people had already been dismissed as a result of the fraud, and that then company would seek to recover some of the money lost as a result of the fraud, claiming back performance-related bonuses inflated as result of the overstatement of profits.
De Ruiter, whose retirement from the post of chairman was accelerated by a shareholder revolt earlier in the year over the way he had handled the accounting fraud, said that the company's auditor, Deloitte & Touche, had found no direct evidence linking those suspected of being responsible for the fraud, but that there was sufficient information to at least raise doubts.
He added that the supervisory and executive boards of Ahold, which have been partially overhauled in the wake of the scandal, were also in no way connected to the affair. Shareholders however repeated their calls for the entire supervisory board to be replaced for allowing the fraud to go undetected for three years.
But De Ruiter also pointed the finger at a number of suppliers to US Foodservice, the Ahold division at the heart of the scandal, claiming that there was clear evidence that they had colluded with Ahold executives to perpetrate the fraud. De Ruiter did, not, however, mention any names.
Such claims could have serious implications for the suppliers in question, which include some of the biggest names in the US food industry. Companies investigated over possible implications in the fraud include Sara Lee, ConAgra Foods, Heinz, Kraft Foods, General Mills and Tyson Foods. Sara Lee has already reprimanded three executives found to have been involved in the affair, although it, along with all the other companies involvement, initially denied any involvement.
The revelations seem to have gone a long way towards reassuring Ahold's troubled shareholders that the new management is determined to be more transparent, and is acting promptly to limit the damages from the fraud.
All the resolutions put forward at the AGM yesterday, including the new two-for-three rights issue designed to help raise more than €3 billion, and the bonus package for new CEO Anders Moberg, were approved by shareholders.
