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A Bloomberg News investigation of more than 49,000 borrowers of CBILS shows that millions of taxpayers' money has been blindly loaned to companies with dubious credentials. This is the first large-scale investigation into CBILS: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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by @ElisaMartinuzzi @DavidIngold @theLinlyShow

The review shows that a business controlled by one of the U.K.’s richest financiers, John Beckwith, received a taxpayer-backed relief loan for about 3.7 million pounds — even though the company hasn’t been trading for years.

The lending raises fresh questions about the government’s attempts to keep details of the loans secret and the extent to which lenders carried out due diligence.

Beckwith, a Conservative Party donor, said the loan was used to refinance borrowings secured against properties that are owned by the parent of Tempus Court, Mortar Tempus Court LLP, which isn’t dormant.

About 60 dormant companies — firms that had reported no activity for accounting purposes when they borrowed the funds — had access to the funds. The investigation shows that more than 85 companies had only been around for weeks, or at most a few months, before receiving loans.

We are making the data available to the public: github.com/BloombergGraph…

The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy,  which oversees the BBB and was ultimately responsible for the emergency loans, is “continuing to crackdown on Covid-19 fraud''

Some borrowers like Blue Ocean Topco Holding used the taxpayers money for M&A operations. Founded by a former investment banker, Gregory Pezzella, it was incorporated on Aug. 12, 2020,  Companies House records show.

Within just 48 hours, the firm, run by the ex-banker who had earlier worked for Goldman Sachs and JPM obtained 4.7 million pounds in taxpayer-guaranteed loans. According to public records, Pezzella’s firm has since bought care homes in the northwest of England.

John White, a former managing director at hedge fund GLG Partners founded Calibrate in 2018. In June 2020, the company filed accounts to the business register showing that it was dormant through the end of 2019. Yet in August 2020 the company borrowed about 1mln.

Less than a year passed before Calibrate went into voluntary liquidation. It has just 151,237 pounds left for creditors including HSBC Holdings Plc.

HSBC also turned up in a liquidation filing by My Companiie Ltd., founded by Adam Phillips, who appeared on the BBC reality show Dragons’ Den in 2010 to try to raise money for a business making buggies.

My Companiie, which received a 2 million-pound CBILS loan at the peak of the pandemic, had never reported any trading activity to the business register, records show.

The firm entered voluntary liquidation this year, owing HSBC a total of 3.5 million pounds; it has just 20,000 pounds of assets available for creditors, filings show. Phillips, reached by e-mail, declined to comment, as did HSBC.

“The banks acting on behalf of the government needed to engage in due diligence,” said Prem Sikka, emeritus professor of accounting at the University of Essex and a lawmaker in the U.K. parliament’s upper chamber.

Lawmakers are promoting a bill to give investigators powers to pursue directors of dissolved companies that took Covid loans.  But in some cases it may already be too late.

“These companies, which according to their accounts have no turnover or assets, suddenly springing into action to claim business support should have raised red flags for lenders,” said Ben Cowdock, who leads Transparency International’s U.K. research