Yesterday, PPE Medpro, established by Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Douglas Barrowman, failed to repay the £122 million it owes the UK government due to a breach of contract for not providing medical gowns that were sterile enough. According to a report in the Scotsman newspaper, the UK Department of Health & Social Care won its legal case in court, which was supposed to force the company to pay up. PPE Medpro had until 4 pm yesterday to pay the required funds to the UK government. According to a report in the BBC, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has vowed to track down all of the money owed to the government, which, with interest, now totals £145 million. It is unclear if the company will ever pay back the money, as according to accounts filed in July of this year, the company’s assets total £666,025.
Tag: UK
Siddiq is Facing an Arrest Warrant in Bangladesh.
Several months ago, I wrote an article about Tulip Siddiq, the former Labour Party anti-corruption minister in the UK, facing corruption allegations in Bangladesh. Last week, the BBC reported that the Bangladeshi government issued an arrest warrant for Siddiq on corruption charges. Siddiq released a statement saying that the arrest warrant was part of a “politically motivated smear campaign” against her. According to a report in Sky News, the arrest warrant was issued over allegations about how Siddiq received a plot of land totaling 7,200 square feet in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka. It is unclear whether or not the UK will extradite her, but I could see it becoming a political flashpoint between the two countries.
Anti-Corruption Siddiq Resigns Due to Anti-Corruption Probe.
Last week, the Anti-Corruption minister in Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s government, Tulip Siddiq, resigned. Starmer and Siddiq have been politically close for a while as they are Members of Parliament (MPs) in neighboring constituencies in North London. In a report by the BBC, Siddiq is the niece of Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted as the Prime Minister of Bangladesh in a series of protests led by students last year. Hasina was also alleged to have embezzled £3.9 billion in infrastructure spending from her government. Siddiq’s name came up in a wide-ranging corruption probe linked to several shell companies regarding her use of several properties in north London. As last week wore on, it became clear that her position was untenable; hence, she resigned.
An Update on Michelle Mone.
Recently, it has emerged that Baroness Michelle Mone is facing a criminal investigation concerning the PPE Medpro scandal. According to a report in The Guardian, Mone and her husband, businessman Douglas Barrowman, are facing allegations of conspiracy to defraud, fraud by false representation, and bribery brought by the National Crime Agency (NCA), Britain’s version of the FBI. For the last several years, Mone and Barrowman have denied any involvement in profiting off the lucrative government contracts awarded to PPE Medpro. According to an article in the BBC, Mone regrets not informing the public of her role in the company. However, she made this apology in a documentary funded by PPE Medpro. This all seems dodgy to me, and I don’t see the NCA putting much stock in it, either.
Major Match Fixing Scandal Plagues Snooker.
Match-fixing scandals are not a new occurrence in sports; football, Tennis, and many other sports have had to deal with match-fixing scandals in recent years. Even snooker, a sport much like Billiards popular in the UK and China, has fallen victim to corruption. According to an article on the BBC, ten Chinese players based in Sheffield, England, the city hosting the Snooker World Championships, were in financial difficulties last year. As a result, they resorted to manipulating the outcome of matches they played in return for money. The scandal was blown wide open by snooker’s governing body, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), being alerted to suspicious betting patterns and whistleblowers from inside the game. This incident shows that no matter how big or small the sport is, match-fixing is always a threat to the integrity of the game.
The Sad State of Captain Tom’s Legacy.
In 2020, at the beginning of COVID, a 99-year-old British World War II veteran Captain Tom Moore captured the hearts of a nation by walking laps in his back garden. In a time of deep uncertainty and fear about an ever-growing pandemic, Captain Tom gave everyone hope. He raised £38 million for National Health Service (NHS) charities and was knighted for his efforts. However, since then, much of the initial goodwill has receded as the charity sent up by his daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore, has been embroiled in scandal.
A few weeks ago, the Guardian reported that the charity in question called the Captain Tom Fund, has stopped receiving money from donations after it emerged that a building attached to Ingram-Moore’s house, purported to be office space, was denied retrospective planning permission (an essential step in the UK for any new construction). It emerged that the building was not an office but a recreational space, including a swimming pool and changing rooms. Subsequently, Central Bedfordshire Council, which rules on planning issues, ordered the building to be torn down. This is on top of questions being asked about the charity’s governance and where the donations were ending up. Captain Tom lifted many people’s spirits, and seeing his legacy being sullied by family members is profoundly sad.
Is Thames Water Going Down the Drain?
This week in the UK, Thames Water, the company that supplies water to London and the South of England, faces an uncertain future. It has racked up debts of nearly £15 billion, and the UK government will likely have to bail the company out. Thames was privatized during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership in the 1980s, and since then, different entities have bought portions of the company. According to an article in The Independent, the single largest shareholder is a Canadian pension fund called the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, which holds around 32 percent of the company. On top of that, the sovereign wealth funds of both Abu Dhabi and China. While there may not be any outright corruption, there is a valid question: why would a bunch of pension funds and sovereign wealth funds want a piece of a British water company? Besides making money, the whole situation seems murkier than the Thames. The future of Thames Water is uncertain; however, this proves that the Renationalization of crucial industries in the UK should be considered.
UK Government Plan to Enhance Their Transnational Crime Laws.
Recently, the UK Government announced a plan to strengthen its laws regarding transnational crime. A primary focus of this plan is to stop the flow of illicit money entering the country. The government’s press release states it will commit £400 million to combating money laundering worldwide. Despite this supposed rosy outlook, a report by The Guardian suggests that the level of commitment, both in terms of money and personnel, is not enough. Despite the language in the government report, the Guardian notes there are concerns by both politicians and think tanks that not enough is being done to stop the flow of Russian money into the UK. It strikes me that there will need to be more investment into this issue if the tap of dirty money is ever to be turned off.
Going Bust: The Troubles of Michelle Mone
Recently, Baroness Michelle Mone, a member of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, has been facing allegations that she and her family have unethically profited from government contracts awarded at the beginning of the pandemic. Mone is well known in the UK for founding Ultimo, a designer lingerie brand, leading to the nickname in some quarters of the UK media as “Baroness Bra.” On November 23 of last year, The Guardian published an exclusive saying that Mone and her children received £29 million ($36 million) from the profits of a company called Medpro PPE. Medpro was given a £200 million contract to provide Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) through the so-called “VIP lane,” where the government appeared to hand out contracts to companies with close links to people in government. Some of the PPE Medpro provided to the government proved defective and is currently sitting in warehouses.
In the case of Mone specifically, according to a follow-up article in The Guardian, it is clear that the Baroness had a much less stressful pandemic than most people. She and her then fiancé, a businessman named Douglas Barrowman, bought a luxury yacht called the Lady M. It is alleged that Barrowman received 65 million pounds in profits through the same scheme and then passed 29 million pounds of that on to an offshore trust that Mone and her children control. recently, The Guardian published an article saying Mone is taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords to try and clear her name. It is unclear what will happen next, but it appears that Baroness Mone has some explaining to do about how she may have profited off the misery of millions.
Crispin Corruption Report 