Suitcases of Covid loan cash seized at UK’s borders – Recipients of pandemic support also spent the money on gambling sprees, home improvements and cars, a Times investigation finds

13 comments

  2. The greed and entitlement of these people makes me sick. When they knew so many people were struggling and out of work. While many of us were helping family, friends and neighbours stay safe and afloat they were busy taking for the average Joe to line their own pockets. All enabled by this incompetent joke of a government.

  3. These loans did help out a lot of people, but because of the need to get them processed quickly some criminals took advantage. It’s another example of why “we can’t have nice things”.

    Many are being investigated, but it’s a hard one to track down as often there will be grey areas as to the legitimacy of the claims.

    > They are among dozens of company directors who have been disqualified after misusing the loans scheme that was set up to support businesses during the pandemic.

  5. Some highlights from the article:

    > It is estimated that as much as £17 billion of the £47 billion the government spent on bounce-back loans for businesses will never be paid back and about £4.9 billion of that is suspected to have been lost to fraud.

    So almost 1 in three loans may not be paid back.

    > “These failures of due diligence are startling, proving that there were in effect no protections on the money being sent out,” he said. “It would have taken as little 15 minutes for an entry-level researcher to do the kind of basic due diligence that would have prevented these kinds of cases from happening, which might have cost as little as £20 per loan.”

    Remember that the banks were told **not** to do any checks.

    > He said: “from the launch of the scheme, the British Business Bank has worked with lenders and across government to prevent, detect and counter fraud and put in place as quickly as possible additional measures to further mitigate fraud risks, including using data from Companies House.”

    There is very little evidence of that.

    > The British Business Bank, which handled the government’s Covid bounce-back schemes, has been refusing for more than a year to publish its records of who got the money, and is fighting transparency campaigners in the courts.

    Public money handed out without public having a right to know where it went.

    > Similar payments are a matter of public record in countries such as the United States, and experts say releasing the information could help tackle fraud. The government, however, says it could lead to “vigilante activity” against suspected fraudsters.

    *Vigilante activity *, now there is an excuse!

    > The Fraud Advisory Panel, an independent charity that brings together the anti-fraud community, wrote to Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, in June 2020 explaining that a “lack of transparency” around who benefited from the schemes provided “an opportunity to defraud the UK”.

    Maybe that’s the whole point of the refusal.

    > The letter, whose signatories included David Clarke, then chair of the organisation and the head of fraud at City of London Police, and Rosalind Wright, former director of the Serious Fraud Office, said transparency was required due to the “serious weaknesses that enable fraudsters and corrupt insiders to exploit the bounce-back and [Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan (CBIL)] scheme.”

    Who would listen or trust the experts? The government knows best.

    > Figures released to OpenDemocracy under the freedom of information act show that the cost to departments of fighting tribunal cases against transparency can be as much as £130,000. Most cost tens of thousands in legal fees.

    So far…

    > The government also refused a Times request for information on where nearly £1bn in Sunak’s pet scheme, Eat Out to Help Out, went, despite releasing similar information in the case of furlough payments.

    > The government has also resisted calls to issue the identity of businesses that borrowed a combined £1.14 billion via Sunak’s Future Fund scheme for technology start-ups. Of the 1,190 borrowers, only 265 have been identified — those businesses whose taxpayer loans have converted into equity.

    So essentially where all these billions went is none of our business, the taxpayers have no right to know how the government spends their money.

    > Lord Agnew of Oulton, the former minister who resigned at the despatch box in protest at poor oversight of the bounce-back scheme, said he suspected there was a reticence to publish more data about borrowers due to government embarrassment.

    I wonder if it is even possible to make them look more ridiculous than they already are.

    > He told MPs in March: “Governments hate [transparency] because it shines a light into areas which they don’t want people to see.”

    Especially when it comes to mismanagement of public funds and the “financial competence “ they claim to have.

    > The (British Business) bank said that increased transparency could lead to greater fraud, but it declined requests by The Times to provide evidence of this.

    There we go!

  6. Down vote all you want but I’ll stand by what I say here.

    Lockdowns were a HUGE mistake. Closing entire sectors also a huge mistake. It was obvious from the very beginning that unless you are elderly, are very overweight or have some underlying illness that makes you vulnerable, that the worst covid was going to do to you was put you in bed for a week or so.

    Furlough and support payments should have gone to people in those groups ONLY, or those living with them with nowhere else to go. Not this free money for everyone strategy this nonsense government cooked up. With most people still in work, there would have been capacity to do proper checks too.

    This free for all has economically screwed us for years to come.

  8. The amount of tradespeople that claimed covid loans and continued to work for cash was a joke; let’s be honest though, most of us would have given the opportunity. It’s more annoying though, when you worked throughout, not receive any financial recourse but will be expected to pay for everyone else who did…

  10. By the by, what this will be referring to is dodgy bounce back loans.
    I work in fraud for a bank and we rejected a huge number of them for fake documents that we could tell were made from a set of templates.

    Ed: people whose turnover didn’t qualify for £50k and ‘zombie’ business that should have closed previously, too.

  11. Yet we’re supposed to believe that it’s the unemployed and people on benefits generally that are a drain to the tax payer.

  12. The annoying thing is I think a lot of people could have done something similar, made fake companies and hired their family and raked in the money but most people would rather not be scumbags and fuck over everyone else.

    Now it’s all coming out publically and literally nothing will be done to these people because if they go after big john from the work who stole £20k they might accidentally shot their mate in the crossfire who stole £2m from the government.

  13. Hold up. So a company that’s only been around 2 weeks and has nothing to do with PPE getting a million pounds PPE contract was a con to steal our cash for personal gain? Say it ain’t so.

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