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A DAMNING report published yesterday entitled âTrack and Traceâ by Transparency International has shone a light on the Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) scandal, where at the beginning of the pandemic, the Tory government gave government contracts to all manner of businesses to produce masks, gowns and gloves.
A fifth of contracts awarded between February and November 2020 contained one or more red flags for possible corruption and require urgent further investigation. The report gets to the heart of the PPE scandal, in which Tory donors were awarded contracts even if they had never produced PPE before. Millions of items of gloves, aprons and masks were of such substandard material that they had to be dumped. Other companies despite receiving millions of pounds of public money, did not produce a single piece of PPE in return.
A staggering one in five of all contracts doled out in the pandemic "raise one or more red flags" for being dodgy, a major new study found. The Transparency International report slammed the VIP lane which gave high priority to companies referred.
David Cameron′s not so hidden hand | Business| Economy and finance news from a German perspective | DW dw.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dw.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Coronavirus contracts awarded by the UK Government worth more than £3.7 billion raise at least one red flag for possible corruption, according to a report.
Transparency International UK says that how the Government handled bids for supplying personal protective equipment (PPE) and other pandemic contracts appeared to favour those with political access.
The independent anti-corruption organisation identified 73 contracts worth more than £3.7 billion – equivalent to 20% of all contracts between February and November of last year – whose award “merits further investigation”.
Nurses have to regularly change their PPE (Jane Barlow/PA)
It found that of the cases of concern, 24 contracts for PPE worth £1.6 billion were awarded to those with known political connections to the Conservative Party.