Asda in a £600,000 fight with ex-boss

Asda is to take legal action against one of its former bosses in an attempt to recover £600,000.

The supermarket chain says it mistakenly paid the sum to the Inland Revenue as tax on a shareoption windfall collected by Allan Leighton.

Mr Leighton, who is now chairman of the Post Office and the Bhs retail chain, was credited with making Asda a major force before he left in 2000. As chief executive, he became a multi-millionaire on the back of a huge pay and perks package plus a series of highly lucrative share options.

However, Asda now claims that it paid the tax, estimated at £600,000, on the profit made on these share options. It says Mr Leighton should have forked out the tax himself and it has been chasing him for more than five years to clear up the issue.

Now Asda has gone to the High Court in an effort to get him to hand over the money.

Mr Leighton insists he paid all the tax that was due. If this is so, it may be that both Asda and Mr Leighton paid the tax, in which case the Inland Revenue has been sitting on £600,000 which should go back to the supermarket.

An Asda spokesman explained the launch of the legal action, saying: "It gives us no pleasure to do this and we have exhausted every other option. We simply can't say goodbye to £600,000 - the thousands of colleagues working in our stores would expect us to do nothing less."