It says a lot that so many politicians and their friends saw the pandemic as a get rich quick scheme.
In this case a disgraced former MP working with an organic dog food company owner (!) to broker a deal with a Hong Kong company, which itself seems to be a middleman. 🙄
Former Tory MP Brooks Newmark emailed Hancock to ask for his help to "make this happen".
Newmark had quit in 2014 after sending explicit photos to an undercover journalist who he thought was a young activist.
Not his first sext, it later emerged.
google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.…
He was lobbying on behalf of Zoe Ley, a former investment banker turned dog food company owner.
She setup a new company in May 2020 which helped broker two PPE deals, worth a total of £258m.
The BBC thinks she personally made over £1m from this.
google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.…
The company on the other end of the deal was Worldlink Resources in Hong Kong, who describe themselves as "experts in sourcing products from China and other Asian countries".
They boast of "unprecedented access to strategic supplies of PPE".
worldlink-resources.com
Worldlink told an industry insider investigating the deal for the BBC that Ley's involvement was crucial, acting as a bridge to the UK government.
It now looks likely that Brooks Newmark was that bridge.
google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.…
After Newmark contacted Matt Hancock (he says to "chivvy along" the process), Hancock's aide in turn emailed PPE tsar Lord Deighton, asking him to urgently "look into" the "excellent proposal", noting that it came from "former MP Brooks Newmark".
thetimes.co.uk/article/0ed346…
This is all part of a pattern of companies and individuals using personal contacts in government to sidestep procurement processes, using a VIP lane that fast tracked their proposals.
Some of these contacts were tenuous, to say the least...
google.com/amp/s/amp.theg…
Civil servants complained that they were being deluged with proposals through the VIP lane, many of them simply not credible.
But because they were referred by ministers, MPs or other people linked to the government, they had to be looked at first.
Other companies that didn't have a "bridge to the UK government" but did have (say) actual experience providing PPE didn't get the same treatment.
What was supposed to speed up provision of PPE may actually have made the situation worse, while enriching the government's friends.
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