Thread: Fifth of UK Covid contracts ‘raised red flags for possible corruption’

Fifth of UK Covid contracts ‘raised red flags for possible corruption’

Report finds ‘apparent systemic bias’ in award of lucrative PPE deals favouring firms connected to Tories

One in five government Covid contracts awarded between February and November 2020 contained one or more red flags for possible corruption and require urgent further investigation, a respected campaign group has warned.


Transparency International UK said a “seriously flawed” arrangement, whereby companies bidding for contracts were prioritised if they were referred into a “VIP lane” by their political connections, had “damaged trust in the integrity of the pandemic response”.


The group said Boris Johnson’s government must urgently disclose the identities of companies awarded public money through the VIP lane, which was set up by the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health and Social Care in the early days of the pandemic.


Fifth of UK Covid contracts ‘raised red flags for possible corruption’ | Coronavirus | The Guardian

of course businesses will have more connections and contacts with the conservatives than with labour.

with the labour party being the enemy of ambition and private enterprise what business in their right mind would ally and develop connections with a labour party that has been out of government for the past 11 years and seeks at every opportunity to hamstring capitalist ventures with adverse taxation and employment policies.

the guardian ! pffft.

More on the Transparency International Report:

April 22, 2021 – The way the UK Government handled bids for supplying personal protective equipment (PPE) and other COVID-19 response contracts appears partisan and systemically biased in favour of those with political access, new research from Transparency International UK finds.


Launched today, Track and Trace is the most comprehensive study to date of public procurement during the pandemic and involved a painstaking review of nearly 1,000 contracts worth a total of £18 billion.


The report details how critical safeguards designed to prevent corruption were suspended without adequate justification. Transparency International UK identify 73 contracts worth more than £3.7 billion, equivalent to 20 percent of COVID-19 contracts between February and November 2020, that raise one or more red flags for possible corruption.


Of particular concern is the ‘VIP’ or ‘high priority' lane used to fast track offers of PPE from companies referred by MPs, peers and senior officials. Our analysis of the available evidence is consistent with there being systemic bias towards those with connections to the party of government in Westminster, despite continued claims by the Government to the contrary.


The report concludes that poor record keeping combined with opaque, uncompetitive contracting and a suspiciously high number of awards to companies with political connections has undermined public trust and justifiably fuelled criticism of the Government.

Full report available on PDF here:

Concern over corruption red flags in 20% of UK's PPE procurement | Transparency International UK

meanwhile, cyrille, the forums most boring hypocrite, educated and brought up in the uk at the taxpayers expense, continues to rail non stop against the country whilst working tax free in one of the most corrupt countries on earth and planning his retirement in another country known for its abuses of human rights, its corruption, its racism, its human trafficking, its slave labour and its brutal military dictatorship.

Cyrille's retiring to Anglesey, is he.

Well, I never.

Originally Posted by taxexile

of course businesses will have more connections and contacts with the conservatives than with labour.

with the labour party being the enemy of ambition and private enterprise what business in their right mind would ally and develop connections with a labour party that has been out of government for the past 11 years and seeks at every opportunity to hamstring capitalist ventures with adverse taxation and employment policies.

the guardian ! pffft.

Tax, don't be so obtuse. We are not talking about legitimate businesses already trading within related fields having acquired years of expertise, knowledge and acumen. We're talking about a bunch of sleazy Tory cronies with no track record in health care licking Tory arse by donating funds ( bribes ) in order to win government contracts without any competitive tendering processes or oversight by the relevant ministries.

It's a fucking tinpot, banana republic jamboree of self interest suckling on the teat of crony capitalist Tory corruption.

Don't be such a silly arse and get your head out of it.

It's a fucking tinpot, banana republic jamboree of self interest suckling on the teat of crony capitalist Tory corruption.

colonel hindsight and his snivelling self loathing lickspittle doing what they do best, sniping ineffectually from the sidelines.

its the loony left, as usual, trying to make political capital from the panic at the start of the pandemic.

it was an emergency situation you daft buggers, and those involved in the procurement of ppe faced both the challenge of an overheated global market and an inadequate UK stockpile, and at the height of the emergency, it was more than reasonable to place urgent orders directly with suppliers, rather than use the much slower audited competitive tendering methods.

uncompetitive procurement methods should not be allowed to become the norm, but in the emergency that presented itself at the start of the pandemic, it was throw the procedure book in the bin, all hands on deck, shoulders to the wheel, noses to the grindstone and anything goes.

and it worked, as did the vaccine gamble, another decision made without committees, sub commitees, audits, majority voting, endless debate and months of non action.

exactly how it should be, and exactly what anyone would do in a similar situation.

Bullshit, Tax.

Why are you geriatric saps so fucking credulous.

Look, it wasn't capitalism that gave us the vaccine programme, you gormless buffoon.

It was: £495 millions of public money bunged to the AZ and Oxford up front, and 1,200,000 workers in the NHS funded by £120 billion annual budget organised by a core cadre of 300 civil servants working their arses for a pittance.

Now, shove your Tory crony propaganda up where the sun don't shine, you silly whippet fucking Bozo sycophant.

The chances are they knew these companies could deliver on account of the lucrative directorships being offered to them on their retirement.

The labour party would have awarded contracts to the Neasden South Asian Lesbian Collective regardless of their ability to actually come up with the goods.

geriatric!

i'm most certainly younger than you you decrepit old codger.

it wasn't capitalism that gave us the vaccine programme,

of course it wasnt. it was enterprise, quick thinking and a refreshing lack of procedural treacle.

look at the mess the eu got themselves into, and just imagine where we would be if a labour government was in power. we would be grovelling for sputnik and sinopharm.

christ on a bike s.a. no wonder they booted you out of the civil service.

you and sybil. one with his desk littered with parkers and osmiroids and the other one with his threadbare blazer pocket full of leaky biros.

Originally Posted by Seekingasylum

Look, it wasn't capitalism that gave us the vaccine programme, you gormless buffoon.

The vaccines were developed almost exclusively via socialist channels. Funded and administrated via Socialist means especially in the US where the vaccine is being administered via the federal government.

Originally Posted by Seekingasylum

It was: £495 millions of public money bunged to the AZ and Oxford up front

A drop in the bucket compared to the billions that the US has spent.

The vaccines were developed almost exclusively via socialist channels.

COVID-19: The multi-billion pound business of the Oxford vaccine.

A leading researcher on the vaccine insisted it was made not-for-profit during the pandemic, but could earn millions after.

Paul Kelso - Health correspondent
Paul Kelso
Business correspondent @pkelso

Monday 23 November 2020 12:28, UK

COVID-19CORONAVIRUSVACCINATION


The Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine is a collaboration between a pharmaceutical giant and an ancient institution aiming to become as adept at monetising its discoveries as it is at making them.

It is a combination that could hasten the defeat of COVID-19 and may, in time, net the university and some of its leading researchers a share of more than £74m.

It also casts light on the relationship between publicly-funded academia and private finance that increasingly drives scientific innovation, often to the benefit of patients and shareholders, as well as the disquiet of those who mistrust the role of the private sector.


The brains behind the vaccine are based at Oxford's Jenner Institute - named after Edward Jenner, creator of the smallpox vaccine, and part of the faculty of medicine.

Chief among them is Professor of Vaccinology Sarah Gilbert, whose ongoing research left her ideally placed to tackle COVID-19 when it emerged as a global pandemic at the turn of the year.

Her focus has been developing vaccines that use viral vector "platform technology", essentially a vehicle that can be adapted to carry genetic material from a given disease required to trigger an immune response.



Her motivation is to save lives by providing a vaccine that can beat back the coronavirus and normalise social and economic life around the world.

But it may also prove highly rewarding courtesy of a structure, encouraged by the University of Oxford, designed to maximise and monetise the benefits of academic innovation.



At Professor Gilbert's insistence, AstraZeneca has committed that the vaccine will be made on a not-for-profit basis as long as COVID-19 is classified as a pandemic, and will remain so when sold to developing nations.

Should the disease recede and the vaccine become an annual defence against COVID-19 sold at a profit, Professor Gilbert, her close colleagues, the university, and a range of private and corporate investors - including Google's parent company Alphabet - all stand to benefit.

Before COVID, the rights to develop and manufacture the vaccine were owned by Vaccitech - a commercial spin-off founded in 2015 by Professor Gilbert and her colleague Professor Adrian Hill, a geneticist and the director of the Jenner Institute.

As part of the deal, the university retained a 50% share of the rights.


Oxford encourages its researchers to form private companies in order to attract outside investment in its innovations and allow it to share the financial benefits, rather than see them all pass to the private sector.

Since 2016, it has been a partner in the world's largest university venture capital vehicle, Oxford Science Innovation (OSI), which has raised more than £600m for investments in life sciences, AI and deep tech.

OSI is a major shareholder in Vaccitech, and its investors include GV (formerly Google Ventures), the Wellcome Trust and Fosun, the Chinese healthcare conglomerate that owns Premier League club Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Professor Gilbert and Professor Hill remain employees of the university and - until September, when Professor Gilbert stepped down from the Vaccitech board to focus on the vaccine - directors of the company. Between them, they still own around 10% of Vaccitech.

When it became clear that the coronavirus would demand a global vaccination programme running to billions of doses, the university and Vaccitech accepted they required a larger partner to handle manufacture and commercial processes.



After negotiations with several potential partners, acknowledged as fraught by some of those involved, Vaccitech agreed to pass its rights back to the university, allowing Oxford to do an exclusive deal with AstraZeneca.

According to figures first reported by the Wall Street Journal, AstraZeneca paid the university an up-front fee of $10m (£7.4m) and has promised a further $80m (£59.4m) in "milestone payments".

AstraZeneca will only take a profit when COVID-19 is not a pandemic, a decision it says will be based on the views of a range of independent bodies.

When that moment comes, the university will receive royalties of 6% on AstraZeneca's vaccine sales. It is reported Vaccitech will receive 24% of those fees.

AstraZeneca estimates it will spend $6bn (£4.5bn) producing the three billion doses it has promised globally by the end of 2021. Of that, $1bn (£740m) is "non-manufacturing" costs, including licensing, the cost of trials and regulation, and pharmacovigilance, the ongoing monitoring of safety. A further $5bn (£3.7bn) covers manufacturing.

?
It is expected governments will be charged $3-$4 (£2.20-£2.97) for every dose - around a tenth of the price of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Manufacture and supply deals have been negotiated by its commercial teams around the world, with partner institutions and companies in India, Russia, Latin America, the US and Australia.



Oxford University has received £65.5m of funding from the Vaccines Taskforce, leaving it open to criticism that public funds are boosting private profits.

AstraZeneca points out it will not initially take a profit. A further counter is that taxpayer funding de-risks the private investments required to speed up development.

For example, the three stages of clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines are being conducted in parallel rather than in series. And AstraZeneca, like Pfizer, has manufactured large quantities of vaccine "at-risk" before it has received approval from regulators around the world.


Vaccitech's chief executive Bill Enright would not comment on contractual negotiations or the finances of the vaccine development, but he defended the notion of private-public partnerships.

"Institutions are really good at discovery early development, but most of them do not have the expertise in product development, and doing what it takes to bring a product to market through phase two and phase three trials. That gets expensive and universities don't want to pay for that," he told Sky News.



"So seeking funding from elsewhere, from venture capital groups that are willing to take these kinds of risks and expense, for appropriate rewards, is a great way of delivering innovation.

"Some would argue that because the government has provided funding some of this might not be appropriate, but that funding allows the companies involved to take the appropriate risks."

Vaccitech may now be a spectator as the first iteration of the COVID-19 vaccine is developed, but it could again play a central role in future. It retains the exclusive rights to the next phase of the viral vector technology that could drive the second generation of COVID-19 vaccines, and has received £2.3m of public funding to develop it.

COVID-19: The multi-billion pound business of the Oxford vaccine | Business News | Sky News

Number 10 wants to see BoJos phone!

That's how untrustworthy this serial cheat and liar is!

No 10 to investigate text leaks from Boris Johnson’s personal phone

No 10 to investigate text leaks from Boris Johnson’s personal phone | Boris Johnson | The Guardian

The wages of corruption eh Simples, nasty money finds a home with those who have no morals

Originally Posted by Seekingasylum

Cyrille's retiring to Anglesey, is he.

Well, I never.

There's no need for that heinous slur on the sunshine Isle.

If Cyrilles retiring there then that's my plans for a holiday home there changed.

Transparency International is a highly credible source, saying it's stated concerns are simply politically motivated is the lowest form of slander. These concerns should and surely will be investigated.