Thread by @JolyonMaugham

Coming up: the most extraordinary thread I’ve ever written. On how we blew over £150m and Andrew Mills (a Government adviser) seems to have made a fortune.

But let’s start with introductions. THREAD /1

Andrew Mills.

He’s an advisor to the Board of Trade but you’re not allowed to know that any more. After we started talking about him the Board of Trade stopped publishing its members.

But you can still see them on the Web Archive web.archive.org/web/2019072404… /2

His LinkedIn also says he’s an ‘senior board adviser’ to Ayanda (Ayanda’s website doesn’t mention him).

When we started tweeting about him he also described himself as founder of Prospermill [A1] but he doesn’t anymore [A2].

We’ll return to that. /3

He doesn't seem to like scrutiny much. He’s changed his twitter handle repeatedly since we started tweeting about him. And his LinkedIn name.

But we still caught some screengrabs of him ‘liking’ posts written by civil servants managing NHS procurement. /4

Next, Prospermill Limited.

Prospermill was set up by Andrew Mills and his wife in 2019. It is a £100 company, boxfresh, which has never filed any accounts. It has no demonstrable knowledge of PPE (or anything else for that matter). /5

Finally, on introductions, Ayanda Capital Limited.

It specialises in “in currency trading, offshore property, private equity and trade financing”. And is owned through the – poor even by tax haven standards - tax haven of Mauritius. /6

The @GoodLawProject has been challenging Government's £15bn supermarket sweep approach to PPE procurement though the courts. We have issued judicial review proceedings into three particularly odd looking deals involving a pest controller, a wholesale confectioner and Ayanda. /7

On 29 July we received a response from Government to our formal pre action letter on Ayanda.

It contains an absolutely striking series of admissions. /8

The first is that Prospermill – the £100 company owned by the Mills – “secured exclusive rights to the full production capacity of a large factory in China.” This seems – to put it mildly – implausible.

And as can be seen from later in the letter can’t be taken at face value. /9

The second is that, apparently, Government was prepared to enter into a £252m contract – the largest we have yet seen for the purchase of PPE – with a £100 company owned by an adviser to Liz Truss (although, see above, you’re not allowed to know that anymore). /10

It only contracted with Ayanda because Prospermill didn’t have “established international banking infrastructure that could be used to effect the necessary payments overseas.”

We don't really know what this means. But, anyway, it borrowed Ayanda's, no doubt for a small fee. /11

The third is that Govt bypassed normal procurement procedures that exist to guard against waste and cronyism to buy its entire predicted annual consumption – at elevated pandemic levels – of FFP2 facemasks from one adviser/supplier.

Why? And what could possibly go wrong? /12

Funny you should ask, actually, because as it turned out, quite a lot can go wrong.

Because, fourth, none of those FFP2 masks can be used in the NHS. /13

What sort of financial loss does this represent? We calculate between £156m and £177m of public funds. On a single contract - entered into with the vehicle of one of Liz Truss' advisers.

Here's Government's letter and my witness statement calculation of those numbers. /14

Does the Government’s explanation for why it bought the FFP2 masks hold water? Well, here's what Government's letter says - and let's compare it to what Government elsewhere said the technical standard in force at the time required. /15

Here is Government’s own description of what EN 149:2001+A1:2009 required at, we believe, the time the contract was entered into. You can read it (again on the web archive) here: web.archive.org/web/2020041421….

It says quite clearly that there “must” be head-loops. /16

What about the other masks we purchased from Andrew Mills' vehicle, the Type IIR masks?

Well, we don’t know whether these are safe – because they have not yet been tested for release into the NHS. /17

How much profit will Prospermill – will Mr and Mrs Mills – have made?

We do not know because Government has not told us, but we have heard from a third party which itself purchased PPE and sold it to Government that profit margins were often 10% or 20%. /18

We sued the Government last week in respect of the Ayanda contract last week. You can read the court bundle here. The documents to focus on are our statement of facts and grounds and the witness statements. rebrand.ly/ayanda-court-b… /19

We have also sued in relation to Pestfix and Clandeboye.

The IIR masks purchased from Ayanda are untested. So too are the isolation suits from Pestfix and the gowns from Clandeboye.

That means not one item of PPE bought under these three contracts has been used in the NHS /20

These are not, we believe, the only difficulties with the Pestfix and Clandeboye contracts. We also have other – very real – concerns about the nature and quality of what Government bought.

More on those concerns later. /21

No one else is doing this work protecting against croneyism and (at best) poor procurement.

If you would like to support these cases you can do so here crowdjustice.com/case/108millio… and if you would like to support @GoodLawProject you can do so here goodlawproject.org/membership/ /ENDS