Mailwatch(ed) Forum

I'm putting this in the Government section because there's nobody else to point the finger at but them.

As the inquiry looms closer I think we'll need a separate thread to keep this stuff together. Kicking off with this:

Company with just £85 in the bank made £20m profit after Dominic Cummings referred Innova Medical into the ‘VIP’ lane

Good Law Project has seen emails revealing that former No.10 advisor Dominic Cummings referred an offer from two middlemen representing US-based Innova Medical Group within a single hour of being approached.

https://goodlawproject.org/new-company- ... -vip-lane/

The approach came from a firm whose “micro-company” accounts revealed issued share capital of £1 and negative £2k in net assets.

The referral from No.10 was enough to land Innova a place on the VIP lane and the firm subsequently went on to win contracts worth in excess of £4bn – making Innova by far the biggest winners of Covid testing deals during the pandemic.

Within one hour of Dominic Cumings receiving the email, he had referred it to former No.10 advisor William Warr who had in turn referred the offer onto Emma Stanton, the former Director for Supplies and Innovation working on ‘Test and Trace’. Warr also thanked the pair for the “note to Dom”.

Less than two months later, Innova was awarded its first contract, valued at £103m – without competition, to supply lateral flow tests. Innova went on to win 12 contracts to supply Covid tests totalling more than £4bn in value.

Charles Palmer and Kim Thonger contacted Dominic Cummings in July 2020 via their company Disruptive Nanotechnology (trading as Tried and Tested). Companies House records at the time show the firm had only £85 in the bank and owed £3,592 in debts.

Following the eye-watering Innova deals, Disruptive Nanotechnology’s profits surged in 2020/21 to £20.5m with a further £18m cash in the bank. Palmer and Thonger were the company’s only employees at the time.

According to reports, Innova medical group have also cashed in during the pandemic, last year, executives were discovered flying the globe in newly registered Gulfstream jets and purchasing ‘multi million-dollar homes’ directly off the back of contracts awarded by the government.

The decision by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to award contracts worth £4bn to Innova has been controversial. In June 2021, US regulators issued a strict public warning and banned the use of Innova Covid tests due to “significant concerns that the performance of the test has not been adequately established, presenting a risk to health.” The scathing FDA “warning letter” also suggested that Innova may have falsified evidence in support of the efficacy of the tests.

There's lots more in that vein. And this is just one of the many contracts coming under scrutiny.

I don’t quite follow that. They were a couple of blokes with £85 or they were part of a big U.S. operation?

The nub of that in the UK seems to be the first contact for £103m awarded without competition. How did that go? Assume the later ones were all competitive bids, even in the amount is by far the biggest I’ve seen.

Don't worry Foxkiller KC is on the case.

That’s what I’m worried about. Wouldn’t be the first time he exaggerated for fundraising purposes. He does often deliver, in fairness.

Wouldn't be too sure about often delivering



Also there's the time when he claimed to have won a case when he in fact lost

https://www.cityam.com/barrister-jolyon ... t-hancock/

He also overtrumped a defeat in court for Hancock over being too slow to publish contracts, which led to completely unnecessary heat on Starmer for not calling for Hancock to be hanged at Tyburn.

I don’t like Maugham but he can do FOIAs and receive leaks with the best of them. So I don’t rule out him delivering. Though I’m not surprised to see his Greg Hands story wasn’t all that.

I should add that I respect Maugham's calling out of Nick Cohen and the charade that he has resigned because of ill-health.

This is all very well and good, but what's it got to do with Tories and dodgy contracts?

Since Jolyon is leading the charge I wouldn't get your hopes up too much.

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Sat Feb 25, 2023 7:58 pm Since Jolyon is leading the charge I wouldn't get your hopes up too much.

Who said anything about getting hopes up? It's quite obvious that you don't have anything to say about the contents of the article I linked to, you just want to slag off Jolyon Maugham. If you think Maugham warrants an in-depth discussion, start a thread about him. He's not a member of the government, nor was he involved in the process of awarding COVID contracts.

Everything you've posted on this thread so far has been totally irrelevant.

Lots of it was me, in fairness. Fair point, I'll keep to the subject.

@The Weeping Angel
Thanks for the juvenile reaction to my last post. Would you like to explain just why you think I was talking bollocks?

Maybe I don't like being talked to like I 'm dirt you scrapped off your shoe.

Sorry if it came across that way. But the fact remains I started a thread about government contracts and posted a link to an article highlighting the sort of dodgy dealings that were going on during the pandemic, and you immediately dragged the thread off-topic. Everything you've said on this thread is off-topic, and therefore irrelevant. The Good Law Project may well be a subject that's ripe for discussion, but this isn't the thread for it. And I shouldn't have to explain that to you.

Fair enough. Having looked at the article I'll be honest I'm a little confused by what the article is claiming.

It does seem to run two separate stories together, but the salient points are that an American company with zero assets, which only existed on paper, was apparently fast-tracked to a government contract worth over £100 million of taxpayers' money, and another (separate?) American company won contracts worth over £4 billion from the UK government, when their own government wouldn't touch them with a barge pole.
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I wonder if this has anything to do with the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, one Sunak R, going to America to talk to medical companies on more than one occasion?

The COVID inquiry looks like it's going to be "interesting times" for some senior Tory politicians

Unfortunately, these enquiries drag on past the useful life of their subjects.
When they report, the wrongdoers are retired with their full platinum plated pensions.

Other reports lie forgotten at the back of high dusty shelves, and never produce conclusions for the general public.

To me this thread follows 2 lines that aren’t mutually exclusive; it is important that such corruption is highlighted and listed in one place ( Mone, Handcock’s pub landlord, ad nauseum ), if they are all referred to individually the impact and totality of what has happened loses impact; and whilst there may be differing views on JM as a person, it should be understood that he is part of the “movement” that is highlighting the corruption ( Led by Donkeys, Good Law Project) and this should be viewed as a whole

The inquiry will be a bonus for Labour. Instead of accepting Starmer's kind offer of a GE now, the Tories are clinging on to power, and will be fighting a General Election as their woeful mishandling of the COVID pandemic is dragged into the light for all to see. Too many deaths, too many people unable to say goodbye, or even attend a funeral. All the fault of Johnson and co. Even the swivel-eyed among the electorate will lose their trust in the Tories they love so much. Because of this, the Tories aren't just looking at bad election results. They're staring annihilation in the face.

Plus, of course, the possibility, no matter how slim, of some of those in power at the time facing criminal proceedings is something to be savoured.

All these paper companies just waiting to be sprung into action. All the vaguely futuristic but largely meaningless names, with a few tech buzzwords thrown in, like teams on the Apprentice. All these people with a mate in government or the right bits of the civil service. All just waiting for the opportune moment. It's like finding a loads of blank passports in someone's house. Many reasons why they might have them, none of them good.

I'm not a lawyer, and I know fraud can be complicated. But I do know a thing or two about ethics. But come on, even if this is by some stretch of the imagination legal, it is in no way ethical at all.