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5 Mar, 12 tweets, 6 min read
BREAKING: Latest Tory donor list reveals more backers linked to Covid19 contract wins days after:

Globus Shetland owner donated £10k- then won £94m
Efficio’s parent co. director donated £50k- then won £1.45m
Also- P14 Medical owner donated £7.5k after £276m win

@bylinetimes
18 days after donating £10k to the Tories, Globus Shetland Ltd was awarded £94m Covid19 contract in Sep’20.

CEO Haraldur Agustsson is a member of Tory-donor Leader’s Group and his companies have donated over £425k to the party.
Agustsson’s other company, Alpha Solway, has also won 6 Covid19 contracts, totalling nearly £11m.
In addition, Wol Kolade donated £50k to the Tories in March ‘20, The company part-owned by him - Efficio - won 3 contracts worth £1.45m in April ‘20.
Kolade also then donated nearly £10k in July ‘20. Efficio, which was at the time part-owned by Kolade’s investment company Livingbridge, then won another Covid19 contract in November worth £6m.
Then we have ex-Tory councillor Steve Dechan who donated £7.5k to Tory party on 20th October. The founder of P14 Medical, a small loss-making firm, had won, by then, a total of £276m in Covid19 contracts.
P14 Medical was almost £500k in debt before the pandemic. Last year, Dechan bought a £1.5m mansion, reportedly saying “I’ve done very, very well out of Covid.” Silver-haired Dechan is front-left, with former chancellor Sajid Javid.
Only 2 of the 9 contracts above were published within the 30 day legal time frame. There is no claim any of these directors or companies have acted illegally in this contract procurement.
Does this story concern you? Can you help @allthecitizens reveal more concerning Covid-19 contracts lacking possible due diligence and oversight? If so, please see the thread below to find out how you can help contribute and hold power to account:
When reached out to, neither Dechan or the Conservative Party responded to requests for comment.

See the full write up by @WritesBright for @BylineTimes below:
If you want to support the work of The Citizens financially, please support us here:
gofundme.com/f/people-v-zuck
Because, in the end, it seems that investing in the Tories does provide quite a return...

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More from @allthecitizens

The Citizens Profile picture
3 Mar
BREAKING: Over half a billion pounds (£510m) in Covid19 contracts were awarded to 35 management consultancy companies, @allthecitizens has found. £490m was won by just 10 firms. Thread:
Only 21% (29) of these contracts were published within the 30 day legal time limit, and just 5% (8/148) were awarded through competitive tender - the rest were either fast tracked or awarded through previous framework agreements.
The Ministry of Housing Community and Local Government, the Ministry of Defence, and the Department of Health and Social Care were the three biggest ministries that farmed out consultancy services.
Read 16 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
2 Mar
BREAKING: At least 1,250 UK gov contracts issued under Covid19 were not published on time, @allthecitizens have found - meaning 75% of the 1,670 now-public pandemic-response contracts were published unlawfully late. THREAD:
The finding comes after the High Court ruling that Matt Hancock broke the law when failing to publish details of contracts on time. He and other ministers played down the problem, saying they were only published ‘a fortnight late’. This is largely untrue.
theguardian.com/society/2021/f…
After a judge ruled the Health Secretary had breached transparency legislation in how “vast quantities” of public money was spent, @allthecitizens examined almost 1700 contracts, finding an average delay between starting and publication of 93 days.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
Read 22 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
26 Feb
As @allthecitizens explore the scope of US analytics company Palantir in UK institutions, we’ve found £91m+ awarded to the controversial Silicon Valley surveillance outfit across government. Let’s unpack the work they’re doing with the MoD...
Palantir’s biggest UK client, the MOD, has awarded them £43m (4m more found since first reporting) contracts since 2015, including building a “search visualisation and analysis system”, a £28m contract relating to AI systems in combat aircraft. wccftech.com/palantir-secur…
In the US, Palantir recently took over a similar initiative. Project Maven was a Pentagon bid to build an AI surveillance platform for drone warfare. Google stepped away from the project citing ethical concerns. thenextweb.com/artificial-int…
Read 10 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
25 Feb
As @allthecitizens map the expanding reach of controversial company Palantir into UK institutions, we’ve found £91m+ contracts awarded to the US surveillance outfit across British government. Let’s look at their work with local authorities...THREAD
In 2014 Sunderland City Council began operating an “intelligence hub” using Palantir software to “gather, process, and share data and information to help us better understand our customers and communities (and their) patterns of behaviour”.
The 5 yr project, developed under the council’s Community Leadership Programme to achieve “£100m of budget reductions”, ran with Palantir until July 2019, and cost £4.5m - once the contract ended it was hoped Sunderland Council would run it autonomously.
publictechnology.net/articles/news/…
Read 11 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
22 Feb
THE ONE PERCENT - BREAKING

Since March 2020, @allthecitizens has found at least £21bn has been spent by the UK government in their pandemic response.

£5.3bn of this (25%) went to just 1% (10) of the 990 companies that won contracts.

THREAD.
The highest value of contracts, over £777bn, went to the logistics and trade management provider Uniserve. It’s founder, Iain Liddell (below centre) advised a pro-Brexit thinktank chaired by 2 Tory ministers. It’s largest contract win was for almost half a billion pounds.
The next was Unispace Global Ltd, an interior design company, which won almost £680m. Unispace is linked to the Plymouth Brethren, a religious group also tied to major contract awards. One of Unispace’s directors is the son of the Church’s leader.
Read 17 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
9 Feb
BREAKING: new Covid19 contract lands today - £14.4m for PPE back with company CH & L. The director is Hon Frances Stanley, friend of Matt Hancock, whose husband donated £5,000 directly to the Health Secretary.
find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/002630-…
The Contract, for supply of PPE for Healthcare Workers was issued on the 30 April 2020, so has taken 285 days to be published. Stanley was reported in 2016 as a Newmarket Racecourses committee and at a race with the MP for West Suffolk.
skysports.com/racing/news/12…
Frances’ husband Peter gave £5,000 in 2019 directly to the Health Secretary as a donation.
Read 4 tweets

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