A former director of the Serious Fraud Office has said that “urgent attention” should be given to the possibility of criminal prosecutions arising from misuse of government loans to small businesses during the Covid pandemic and the supply of poor-quality personal protective equipment (PPE).
It’s exactly a year since the House of Lords commissioner for standards launched an investigation into the Conservative peer Baroness Mone OBE, who took leave of absence from the Lords last month.
The commissioner confirmed that the investigation would consider her “alleged involvement in procuring contracts for PPE Medpro, leading to potential breaches” of the Lords code of conduct. The code requires peers to register all relevant interests and says they must never accept any financial inducement for exercising parliamentary influence.
In November, the commissioner explained that the standards inquiry could not be completed while the matter was being investigated as part of a criminal investigation.
The commissioner’s statement said:
In accordance with paragraph 144 of the Guide to the Code of Conduct, the commissioner is unable to finalise or publish any report into the conduct of Baroness Mone while the matter is under investigation by the police or another agency as part of a criminal investigation. Once any criminal process is complete or has ceased, the commissioner will complete his investigation and publish his report.
The existence of a criminal investigation into PPE Medpro was confirmed by a health minister in the House of Lords on 30 November. Lord Markham said “we need to let that take its due course”.
It was reported by the Guardian last month that officers from the National Crime Agency have been investigating PPE Medpro, which received more than £200m of government Covid contracts weeks after Mone referred it to ministers.
Sir David Green CB KC was director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) from 2012 to 2018. Uniquely, the SFO investigates and prosecutes the top level of serious or complex fraud, bribery and corruption in England, Wales and Scotland.
Green, now a partner at the international law firm Cohen & Gresser, helped develop the SFO’s intelligence-gathering unit, which has statutory pre-investigation powers. It never reveals which matters it is investigating.
When I asked Green at the end of last week whether he thought the SFO’s intelligence unit might be looking into the allegations against Mone or any company with which she had been involved, the former prosecutor told me he was not prepared to speculate about individual cases.
But Green said he would “expect the SFO intelligence unit to be looking at the issues that have been raised around the PPE contracts and Covid loans”.
He went on:
Significant sums — billions of pounds — are involved and this is clearly a matter of national interest.
If a full criminal investigation is opened it would enable the use of SFO powers to compel answers and explanations and the production of documents from those involved.
Any investigation would have to focus on how contracts were obtained, the process that was followed, including the use of so-called VIP lanes, and what warranties were given as to the quality of the PPE that was procured and supplied.
In relation to Covid loans, I would expect concentration on the role played by organised crime. The use of a single business address by thousands of applicants, the lack of evidence of turnover and the fact that many firms chose to fold very soon after receipt of Covid cash is striking evidence of such organised criminality.
Green said:
The standard Whitehall response may be to push this into the long grass of the Covid inquiry. But the gravity of these issues surely demands urgent attention.
In response to questions about her receipt of PPE Medpro profits, a lawyer for Mone said in November: “There are a number of reasons why our client cannot comment on these issues and she is under no duty to do so.”
A spokesperson for the peer said on 7 December: “With immediate effect, Baroness Mone will be taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled against her.”