Corruption in UK

[msaaim89]

We hear time and time again about corruption in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South Asia. Yet here we are in the UK with vast amounts of taxpayers moneys being looted.

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Investigation into government procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic

This investigation sets out the facts relating to government procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic up to 31 July 2020.

Background to the report

In responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, public bodies have needed to procure enormous volumes of goods, services and works with extreme urgency. On 18 March 2020, the Cabinet Office issued information and guidance on public procurement regulations and responding to the pandemic. This guidance noted that public bodies are permitted to procure goods, services and works with extreme urgency using regulation 32(2)(c) under The Public Contracts Regulations 2015. This sets out the various options available to public bodies if they have an urgent requirement for goods, services or works due to an emergency such as COVID-19, including the use of direct awards to suppliers without any competition.

Concerns have been raised about the risks to public money that could arise from greater use of this regulation. For example, we have received over 20 pieces of correspondence from members of the public and members of Parliament raising concerns about the transparency of contracts being awarded during the pandemic, potential bias or conflicts of interest in the procurement process, and that some contracts may have been given to unsuitable suppliers.

Scope of the report

This investigation sets out the facts relating to government procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic covering the period up to 31 July 2020. It covers:

the need to procure goods, services and works quickly, the regulations that apply to this, and roles and responsibilities (Part One); procurement activity during the pandemic (Part Two); and
management of procurement risks (Part Three).

This investigation covers procurement by government departments and their arm’s-length bodies but does not cover procurements carried out by NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts and local authorities on their own behalf. This work does not evaluate the value for money of the contracts awarded over this period. It is part of a wider programme of work related to government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Concluding remarks

In the months following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 in the UK, government awarded around £18 billion of contracts using emergency procurement regulations to buy goods, services and works to support its response to the pandemic. Government was having to work at pace, with no experience of using emergency procurement on such a scale before and was developing its approach at the same time as procuring large quantities of goods and services quickly, frequently from suppliers it had not previously worked with, in a highly competitive international market. This procurement activity secured unprecedented volumes of essential supplies necessary to protect front-line workers. Our separate report on the supply of PPE looks in detail at the extent to which demand for that equipment was met and the value-for-money achieved.

While government had the necessary legal framework in place to award contracts directly, it had to balance the need to procure large volumes of goods and services quickly, with the increased commercial and propriety risks associated with emergency procurement. We looked in detail at a sample of contracts selected on a risk basis. Although we found sufficient documentation for a number of procurements in our sample, we also found specific examples where there is insufficient documentation on key decisions, or how risks such as perceived or actual conflicts of interest have been identified or managed. In addition, a number of contracts were awarded retrospectively, or have not been published in a timely manner. This has diminished public transparency, and the lack of adequate documentation means we cannot give assurance that government has adequately mitigated the increased risks arising from emergency procurement or applied appropriate commercial practices in all cases. While we recognise that these were exceptional circumstances, there are standards that the public sector will always need to apply if it is to maintain public trust.

https://www.nao.org.uk/report/gover...SocialSignIn&utm_content=COVID-19+procurement

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Investigatings need to take place with severe reprimands.

This tory government is rotten to the core.

[MENTION=7774]Robert[/MENTION]
[MENTION=491]IMMY69[/MENTION]
[MENTION=56933]ElRaja[/MENTION]
[MENTION=43583]KingKhanWC[/MENTION]

 

[ElRaja]

i dont know about the material PPE purchases, but literally any consultancy with no healthcare experience popped up to grab gov contracts. the attitude literally seems to be to grab the contract and figure it out as they go along. to think someone not realising an excel worksheet has a finite amount of rows lead to the covid-19 data screw up last month.

i dont think there will be any real accountability, there is no aspect of the covid-19 response which hasnt been mismanaged to some extent.

 

[msaaim89]

Sweepshot edited my post which does not include the newer link.
[MENTION=56933]ElRaja[/MENTION] It's been absolutely dismal especially how the nonchalantly announced billions being stolen from furlough scheme. Opposition are raising concerns but you are right, it is to be seen if there is any action taken.

 

[msaaim89]

Sophie Hill has done a top job creating My Little Crony which shows connections between Tory politicians and companies being awarded government contracts during the pandemic.

https://sophieehill.shinyapps.io/my-little-crony/

 

[The Viper]

If you think the UK isn't corrupt, you haven't looked hard enough

Fear, shame, embarrassment: these brakes no longer apply. The government has discovered that it can bluster through any scandal. No minister need resign. No one need apologise. No one need explain.

As public outrage grows over the billions of pounds of coronavirus contracts issued by the government without competition, it seems determined only to award more of them. Never mind that the consulting company Deloitte, whose personnel circulate in and out of government, has been strongly criticised for the disastrous system it devised to supply protective equipment to the NHS. It has now been granted a massive new contract to test the population for Covid-19.

Never mind that some of these contracts have reportedly cost taxpayers £800 for every protective overall delivered. Never mind that at least two multi-million pound contracts appear to have been issued to dormant companies.

Awarding contracts to unusual companies, without advertising, transparency or competition now appears to have been adopted as the norm. Several of the firms that have benefited from this largesse are closely linked to senior figures in the government.

Every week, Boris Johnson looks more like George I, under whose government vast fortunes were made by political favourites, through monopoly contracts for military procurement. Any pretence of fiscal rectitude or democratic accountability has been abandoned. With four more years and the support of the billionaire press, who cares?

The way the government handles public money looks to me like an open invitation to corruption. While it is hard to show that any individual deal is corrupt, the framework under which this money is dispensed invites the perception.

When you connect the words corruption and the United Kingdom, people tend to respond with shock and anger. Corruption, we believe, is something that happens abroad. Indeed, if you check the rankings published by Transparency International or the Basel Institute, the UK looks like one of the world’s cleanest countries. But this is an artefact of the narrow criteria they use.

As Jason Hickel points out in his book The Divide, theft by officials in poorer nations amounts to between $20bn and $40bn a year. It’s a lot of money, and it harms wellbeing and democracy in those countries. But this figure is dwarfed by the illicit flows of money from poor and middling nations that are organised by multinational companies and banks. The US research group Global Financial Integrity estimates that $1.1tn a year flows illegally out of poorer nations, stolen from them through tax evasion and the transfer of money within corporations. This practice costs sub-Saharan Africa around 6% of its GDP.

The looters rely on secrecy regimes to process and hide their stolen money. The corporate tax haven index published by the Tax Justice Network shows that the three countries that have done most to facilitate this theft are the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. All of them are British territories. Jersey, a British dependency, comes seventh on the list. These places are effectively satellites of the City of London. But because they are overseas, the City can benefit from “nefarious activities … while allowing the British government to maintain distance when scandals arise”, says the network. The City of London’s astonishing exemption from the UK’s freedom of information laws creates an extra ring of secrecy.

The UK also appears to be the money-laundering capital of the world. In a devastating article, Oliver Bullough revealed how easy it has become to hide your stolen loot and fraudulent schemes here, using a giant loophole in company law: no one checks the ownership details you enter when creating your company. You can, literally, call yourself Mickey Mouse, with a registered address on Mars, and get away with it. Bullough discovered owners on the Companies House site called “Xxx Stalin” and “Mr Mmmmmm Xxxxxxxxxxx”, whose address was given as “Mmmmmmm, Mmmmmm, Mmm, MMM”. One investigation found that 4,000 company owners, according to their submitted details, were under the age of two.

By giving false identities, company owners in the UK can engage in the industrial processing of dirty money with no fear of getting caught. Even when the UK’s company registration system was revealed as instrumental to the world’s biggest known money-laundering scheme, the Danske Bank scandal, the government turned a blind eye.

A new and terrifying book by the Financial Times journalist Tom Burgis, Kleptopia, follows a global current of dirty money, and the murders and kidnappings required to sustain it. Again and again, he found, this money, though it might originate in Russia, Africa or the Middle East, travels through London. The murders and kidnappings don’t happen here, of course: our bankers have clean cuffs and manicured nails. The National Crime Agency estimates that money laundering costs the UK £100bn a year. But it makes much more. With the money come people fleeing the consequences of their crimes, welcomed into this country through the government’s “golden visa” scheme: a red carpet laid out for the very rich.

None of this features in the official definitions of corruption. Corruption is what little people do. But kleptocrats in other countries are merely clients of the bigger thieves in London. Processing everyone else’s corruption is the basis of much of the wealth of this country. When you start to understand this, the contention by the author of Gomorrah, Roberto Saviano, that the UK is the most corrupt nation on Earth, begins to make sense.

These activities are a perpetuation of colonial looting: a means by which vast riches are siphoned out of poorer countries and into the hands of the super-rich. The UK’s great and unequal wealth was built on colonial robbery: the land and labour stolen in Ireland, America and Africa, the humans stolen by slavery, the $45tn bled from India.

Just as we distanced ourselves from British slave plantations in the Caribbean, somehow believing that they had nothing to do with us, now we distance ourselves from British organised crime, much of which also happens in the Caribbean. The more you learn, the more you realise that this is what it’s really about: grand larceny is the pole around which British politics revolve.

A no-deal Brexit, which Boris Johnson seems to favour, is likely to cement the UK’s position as the global entrepot for organised crime. When the EU’s feeble restraints are removed, under a government that seems entirely uninterested in basic accountability, the message we send to the rest of the world will be even clearer than it is today: come here to wash your loot.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-corrupt-nation-earth-brexit-money-laundering