Government corruption
The Guardian is running a significant series on PPE acquisition during the pandemic, and whatever you think of the Guardian (and there are haters here), it has raised a very serious issue. Briefly and in summary, these are the main points:
Michelle "Lady" Mone recommended the company PPE Medpro to government, even before the company had been registered;
She also got in touch with Michael Gove and a Tory peer Agnew to push the company;
The company, which had no record of producing PPE, was awarded contracts totalling £203 million;
One of the contracts, worth £122 million, produced PPE that were not fit for purpose and were rejected;
Medpro are refusing to return the money; now the useless stuff is being stored in China at a cost of nearly £800,000 every day;
Meanwhile, at least £65 million has been siphoned off in profits;
Of those profits, Mone has salted away £29 million in offshore accounts, despite denying having anything to do with the company.
What a catalogue of stinking corruption - and there's no doubt much more to come, given that Transparency International has found that more than £3.7 billion raised one or more red flags for possible corruption (https://www.transparency.org.uk/covid-19-public-inquiry-PPE-procurement-business-loans-anti-corruption). This is not the end of this particular affair!
Richard Carter ● 1165d6 Comments