Thread by @JolyonMaugham

You may remember Ayanda which won a £252m deal to supply facemasks of which £155m worth were unusable by the NHS.

And you may remember that civil servants were worried about not giving Ayanda a contract because of the political connections of Andrew Mills who worked for Ayanda as a consultant.

And that the Department of Health didn't consider a potential conflict of interest before giving Ayanda that £252m contract. nao.org.uk/press-release/…

And that Tim Horlick of Ayanda claimed he had just been approached by "a Chinese lady" who offered him a contract which enabled Ayanda to make £40m.

But we hadn't been able to work out what Andrew Mills had made from his consultancy arrangement because he had quite deliberately chosen to change the nature of his company to one that didn't need to publish its accounts.

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1351786474937720832?t=Rj2bZOTo0TsWRksOFZo5hw&s=19

Someone has helpfully leaked documents to Private Eye showing that Mills was paid £32.4m.

Private Eye also reveals that another Ayanda director made £11.6m commission on the deal.

Together these sums amount to, it seems from Private Eye's reporting, £84m of profits from your taxes going not to suppliers of facemasks but to middle-men who were lucky enough to have the right political connections.