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Slough for Europe 🇪🇺 💙 🇺🇦 Profile picture
@SloughForEU
Jun 15, 2020 • 54 tweets • 17 min read • Read on X
Move along... Nothing to see...
Just a government contract for £108m handed without tender to a company that in their last accounts only had net assets of £18k...
Remember, Cummings has long detested pesky EU procurement rules...
It all seems very weird.
Prior to this year, the only records of them actually trading as a business are selling pest control products as Pestfix
pestfix.co.uk/contact-us.asp
And as Birdstop
birdstop.co.uk/contact-us.asp
And as Bird-X
bird-x.co.uk/contact-us.asp
I'm really struggling to see how any of the above makes them suitable for carrying out a £109m contract to provide NHS PPE.
ft.com/content/43bb10…
Quoted from the above article:
The Department of Health and Social Care declined to comment.
Dan England, co-founder of PestFix, said it had won the contract because it was small enough to be “dynamic” and had made a competitively priced commercial offer.
“We are a success story. We have not been sitting around on social media casting around for equipment; we had a thriving supply chain with China before the contract. We have nearly fulfilled our NHS contract and supplied over 67m pieces of equipment.”
Can anyone confirm whether this was the case. It seems very peculiar to use a pest control product reseller to import PPE... Particularly in such huge quantities.
Something stinks about this whole deal.
Also, their own website (for a company that calls itself Crisp Websites) was the webserver's default page when no site is configured on every past version that is viewable on the Internet Archive.
If @JolyonMaugham & @GoodLawProject hadn't picked up on this, would it even have received any press coverage at all?
Hmm... This doesn't inspire confidence:
Here's another thread about which other companies are connected to the ones mentioned above.
Of particular interest are two set up during the last few month. Why the sudden flurry of activity creating new companies now?
And interestingly, in a previous wording on their website they admit to being essentially unqualified for the job...
But they changed it to something slightly less damning.
Another thread of updates to this story:
Today the story got a mention in the House of Commons thanks to the SNP's @Dr_PhilippaW
And some more developments - Crisp Websites / Pestfix isn't the only unlikely company to receive orders...
And the procurement weirdness continues in this new thread with more vast contacts going to highly unlikely entities (both based on size if company & field of operation).
Seaborne Freight has become the new normal...
Design company Luxe Lifestyle Ltd was awarded a £25m contract on 27 April to supply PPE to the NHS. The business was incorporated by fashion designer Karen Brost in November 2018. However, it appears to have no employees, no assets and no turnover. 
bylinetimes.com/2020/07/02/lif…
Here's a reminder of the state things were in at the time these vast orders were being placed with unknown entities.
A few people have been attending about why now than one of these contracts is for £108m. At first glance it seems a slightly odd amount.
I've been thinking about this and have come up with one idea that I've raised as a possibility on my personal Twitter account.
£108m is equivalent to €119.4m.
This is a little below €120m. Enough so to allow for exchange rate fluctuations etc say.
What the significance of €120m? It's €100m + 20% UK VAT.
€100m falls into the category of nice round numbers that could well be thresholds of some sort
HMRC actually uses the €100m threshold in various regulations and definitions.
Like this one - Claiming Research and Development tax reliefs.
Could they be hoping to apply for R&D tax relief for instance? It's a push, but nothing would surprise me.
gov.uk/guidance/corpo…
It is part of the definition of what constitutes Small and Medium enterprises.
In Article 2(1) of the Annex, the references … 50 million euros and 43 million euros are to be read as references to … 100 million euros and 86 millions euros (respectively).
legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2009/4/s…
You can also find many more mentions by searching for the old value of €50m before it was revised.
It's in page 6 of the The Indirect Taxes (Notifiable Arrangements) Regulations 2017 for instance:
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
That definition (the old annual turnover not exceeding EUR 50 million) threshold to be an SME seems to appear in various EU regulations like this one.
eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/…
Now - I don't know which particular regulation is trying to be avoided here - but there clearly seems to be a €100m threshold used fairly regularly. It could be complete coincidence that we see this £108m (which we now know is just under the equivalent + VAT) multiple times.
Some more media coverage of one of the most obvious of the contract awards.
The Government could face further legal challenges after it awarded a £252.5m PPE contract to a currency trading company owned through an offshore holding firm based in Mauritius.
inews.co.uk/news/health/go…
Without this listing in the EU's OJEU register, one wonders how long it would have taken for anyone outside of those involved being aware of the Ayanda Capital Limited story...
The latest installment in the Pestfix story...
Coverage of the (lack of) transparent public tendering story from @GeorgeMonbiot.
This is something that ought to be getting huge news attention, but so far most of the public seem blissfully unaware of it.
Now the spending watchdog has been urged to get involved:
Michael Gove's using fancy words to avoid answering Neil Gray(SNP) asking why he allowed a political messaging contract to be awarded to a friend, without competitive tender on the basis of emergency legislation, but before the legislation was enacted.
Why is it that this government seems to struggle so much to count properly whenever the item being counted is PPE?
The response a judicial review request over awarding an £840,000 contract makes no attempt, to defend the lawfulness of Mr Gove and/or Mr Cummings’ actions. We, the letter seems to suggest, do not need to explain ourselves; we are above the law.
goodlawproject.org/news/above-the…
Here's the latest thread of updates in the Pestfix PPE procurement saga.
And the decision still isn't making any more sense than it did at the start, despite the government being given the opportunity to answer questions about it.
The procurement corruption story rolls on.
“Health officials signed a £252 million contract to buy masks for frontline healthcare staff from Ayanda Capital in April in a deal brokered by a government adviser who also advises the company’s board.”
thetimes.co.uk/article/minist…
With each turn the PPE procurement story gets more and more extraordinary.
Here's a new thread from @JolyonMaugham on Andrew Mills and Ayanda Capital.
I'm not sure what's more amazing - the extent of the corruption with the Ayanda Capital PPE contract (and others) - or the fact that the people involved thought that nobody would spot it.
Good to see the PPE procurement story finally getting the coverage it deserved all along:
50 million face masks with an estimated cost of £159m bought by the UK government will not be used in the NHS due to safety concerns.
#PPEcorruption #Ayandacapital
news.sky.com/story/coronavi…
Another beneficiary is right wing meme generatiom startup Topham Guerin, who were awarded a £3m for Covid-19 communications.
Is this the best company to manage the Government’s online response to Coronavirus? What is the public getting for the money?
bylinetimes.com/2020/07/23/how…
The bit I find stage is why people aren't more angry about this.
Most of the public came together during the height of the crisis, meanwhile the government was using it as an excuse to spaff money up the wall lining their friends pockets.
It has emerged that the person who originally approached the government about the deal was a government trade adviser who also advises the board of Ayanda.
He said his position played no part in the awarding of the contract.

No... Of course it didn't 🙄
bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-53…
Sounds like Pestfix are feeling a little jumpy about their involvement in the #PPEcorruption scandal...
How much did profit Ayanda Capital / Andrew Mills / Prospermill make on that sigle mask contract?
It could well have been over fifty million pounds!
And the masks they supplied were not fit for purpose...
An interesting detail in the Ayanda Capital / Andrew Mills / Prospermill #PPEcorruption story.
An unlimited company is something very rare to see in the UK.
Suggests that the people involved knew exactly what they were doing and had very specific reasons.
A video about the #ToryCorruption by @PeterKGeoghegan
More on the latest installment of the corrupt procurement scandal.
Why's it always friends of Gove & Cummings?
Almost every single time.
"The blind driver" 😂
No denial of the claims.
No defensive argument made to try and justify the bypassing of the normal tender process to award massive contracts to friends.
Good to see more positive press coverage of the scandal around PPE procurement.
Turns out that awarding contacts to random companies with little knowledge of the market they are claiming to have expertise in doesn't always deliver reliable results. Who would have thought it...

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