The U.K. Serious Fraud Office opened a criminal investigation after Tata Steel Ltd. identified a lapse in procedures at its Speciality Steels business through an internal audit in 2015, the company said in an exchange filing Saturday.
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According to The Daily Telegraph, the police are examining allegations that staff at the company’s office in Britain may have falsified certificates detailing the composition of its products before sale.
Well-placed sources said that the documents being examined affected 500 customers, including BAE and Rolls-Royce.
The Chancellor, George Osborne, suffered a double blow from poor economic data yesterday, including much worse-than-expected news on manufacturing on the eve of the start of the sale process for Tata Steel.
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“The UK’s focus is on finding a long-term sustainable future for steelmaking at Port Talbot and across the UK and I welcomed the potential interest of Chinese companies in investment in UK steelmaking”, Hammond added. David Cameron must be prepared to take a public stake in the steel industry in order to protect the jobs and pensions of workers in the crisis-hit sector, Jeremy Corbyn has said.
Mr Gupta said the handover ceremony for the two Scottish works marked “the beginning of a new era for these plants, for Scottish steel and for British steel as a whole”.
World’s second-most geographically-diversified steel producer Tata Steel on Friday reported a 1.03 million tonnes (mt) rise in agglomerate production in fiscal 2015-16 over a year ago as well as higher efficiency in production.
At least nine employees have been suspended.
The SFO declined to comment and Tata Steel also refused to speak on what it has dubbed “media speculation”.
Liberty House took over two Scottish steel mills, Dalzell and Clydebridge, six months after Tata announced it was mothballing them with the loss of 270 jobs.
Tata’s plants in Wales – at Port Talbot, Llanwern, Shotton and Trostre – have been producing high-quality steel for years.
The union’s assistant general secretary Tony Burke said the secretary of state will have left Port Talbot today in no doubt whatsoever that this steelworks is a national asset and that this is a community that deserves a future.
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The government has faced criticism over its response to Tata’s decision to sell its United Kingdom plant in south Wales, which employs 15,000, with opposition politicians saying it was “asleep at the wheel”.
