Former Labour minister ran ‘shoddy and inadequate’ Covid testing firm, court hears | UK news
A former Labor Secretary ran a “shoddy and inadequate” Covid-19 testing company that made millions from the NHS test and trace service set up in response to the pandemic, a court heard.
Shahid Malik, justice secretary under Gordon Brown, is one of five men charged with fraudulent dealing and public nuisance at Bradford crown court.
The 57-year-old former MP is one of two defendants accused of money laundering. The defendants deny all charges under National Trading Standards (NTS).
Jonathan Sandiford KC, NTS, told the court the defendants were responsible for a Covid testing laboratory set up in 2021 as the third national lockdown ended and the government sought private providers to expand testing and tracing capacity.
Jurors heard the defendants took advantage of this demand by setting up RT Diagnostics, which was run by a facility in Halifax, West Yorkshire, which had “holes in the walls and ceilings, rubbish strewn about and even homeless people living upstairs”.
Jurors were told staff had “little or no training in the handling of coronavirus samples” and were not provided with personal protective equipment or subject to social distancing rules in force at the time.
The court heard RT Diagnostics was on the government’s list of testing kit providers and was required to send results from its laboratory to the NHS test and trace service.
Sandiford said the website “incorrectly” described the laboratory as modern, purpose-built and fully accredited, but RT Diagnostics never completed the accreditation process.
Sandiford said 123,104 tests were reported between May and July 2021, of which 45 – a “suspiciously low” figure – returned positive results, 123,058 were negative and one was indeterminate.
He said that the components of the kits were supplied from Türkiye and did not meet the required standards in England, and that the laboratory did not have enough capacity to perform the number of tests offered. Sandiford said some of the tests were “simply thrown into a room” and put people at risk due to the potential for false negative results.
He also said staff were told to return false negative tests from samples that had never actually been tested.
RT Diagnostics generated revenues of around £7 million between May 22 and June 6, 2021, jurors were told, with Sandiford describing the venture as “all about profit”.
A second company “with a deceptively similar name” was set up, which was used to open a bank account into which all money generated by RT Diagnostics would be deposited, jurors were told.
Malik, Dewsbury East councilor Paul Moore (56), former Halifax councilor Faisal Shoukat (37), Dr. He is on trial together with Alexander Zarneh (70) and Lynn Connell (64). Shoukat is also accused of money laundering. All the defendants deny the accusations.
The trial continues.
