THE whistleblower at the heart of the Tesco accounting scandal involving an Oxfordshire-based executive has described how pressure to close the budget gap left his team "falling apart".

Amit Soni, who joined the UK arm of the supermarket giant as a senior accountant in June 2013, told Southwark Crown Court in London that senior management brushed aside the concerns of commercial directors.

Carl Rogberg, 50, of Chiselhampton, Oxfordshire, Chris Bush, 51, of High Wycombe, and John Scouler, 49, of St Albans, Hertfordshire, are accused of failing to correct inaccurately recorded income figures which were published to auditors, other employees and the wider market.

They all deny the charges.

The supermarket's former finance chief, managing director and food commercial head, who are charged with fraud by abuse of position and false accounting between February and September 2014, were investigated after Tesco was found to have inflated its profits.

A shock announcement published in September 2014 revealed the firm had over-estimated its profits by around £240 million.

Mr Soni told the court that he and the commercial directors had a meeting with Bush on August 22, in which the £240 million was brought to his attention.

But, describing how they were left feeling afterwards, he said: "There was definitely a sense of disillusionment, given that they were about to exit from a very tough half one to then be told there may not be any respite in the second half."

Explaining why he was left feeling more worried after the meeting, he added: "All of us had seen how difficult the half one had been and the hope was through these presentations that there would be an understanding in how tough the business is, how tough the circumstances are.

"The whole purpose of generating these documents was to highlight the fact that there is a gap in half one and if we continue on the same path, there would be a gap in half two as well."

But Mr Soni told jurors that his team was "falling apart" under the pressure to close the gap in the budget.

He said: "I could clearly see that parts of my team were beginning to give up, if not the entire team.

"They all work very, very hard.

"They were all very intelligent people, but it was getting to the point that even they could see that the future was not looking any better, it was not going to get better from what it was today.

"They were seeing me one on one, they were talking to me in groups and I could see them falling apart.

"There were a couple of resignations, there were more than two resignations."

After the meeting Mr Soni also set about getting his team to prepare a Legacy Paper, outlining in detail how the £240 million had come about, the court heard.

He said it was his idea to put this paper together and that it had not been commissioned by Bush or Scouler.

The court heard that on August 26, Mr Soni sent an email to Rogberg and Scouler explaining that the first half of the year had left his team "broken".

In it he also told them that the Tesco legal department was on his case about how the accounts looked from Groceries Supply Code of Practice (Gscop) perspective.

He said: "The activities that were being undertaken to pull forward income, and therefore the manner in which the conversations were happening with suppliers, the mechanics that were being used to pull forward income, was in obvious contravention of the Gscop code."

Jurors have heard that Tesco would use the practice of pulling forward income from the future to artificially inflate the figures of the present, something that was not always in keeping with proper accounting standards and principles.

It is alleged that the misrepresentation of the profits was as a result of forward pulling.

Sasha Wass QC, prosecuting, asked Mr Soni if he thought Rogberg had told the September auditors, PwC, of the discrepancy.

He replied: "I can say no. Because if that was the case, the auditors would have raised a lot of concerns."

Asked why he did not raise it himself, Mr Soni said he thought "long and hard" about it, but decided it was a matter for Rogberg to address.

The trial continues today.