Ex-MP Shahid Malik ran bogus Covid testing firm, court hears

A former government minister ran a bogus coronavirus testing firm which was used as a “cash cow” to make millions, a court heard.

Shahid Malik, Labour MP for Dewsbury from 1997 to 2010, who served as justice minister under Gordon Brown, is on trial at Bradford Crown Court along with Dewsbury East councillor Paul Moore, 56, former Halifax councillor Faisal Shoukat, 37, Dr Alexander Zarneh, 70, and Lynn Connell, 64.

They are accused of fraudulent trading and public nuisance. Mr Malik, 67, and Mr Shoukat are also accused of money laundering.

The five defendants have denied all of the charges against them, with the trial expected to last 14 weeks.

Opening the case earlier, prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford KC told jurors the defendants were all in some way “responsible” for the setting-up and running of a facility in Halifax which “purported to be a testing laboratory” compliant with UK standards.

The laboratory operated “in shoddy and inadequate premises with holes in the ceilings, strewn with rubbish, building debris lying about and even homeless people living on the top floor”, Mr Sandiford said.

The defendants were “employing numerous young people to run this facility who had little or no training in the handling of coronavirus samples”, he added.

The employees were set to work with no social distancing or personal protective equipment (PPE), which was at the time a requirement of coronavirus regulations.

The firm’s website described the facility as “modern” and “purpose-built”, and falsely claimed it was accredited in the UK, Mr Sandiford told the court.

It was listed on a government website as a private provider of PCR tests, which gave the impression it was “approved”, according to the prosecutor.

Once firms were on the government’s list, money “came running in”.

The court heard RT Diagnostics was required to submit results from its laboratory to the NHS Test and Trace service.

Between May and July 2021 it reported 123,104 tests, but only 45 of these were positive results, with 123,058 showing as negative and one indeterminate, Mr Sandiford said.

He added that the test kits sent out – sourced from Turkey – did not meet the required standards in the UK, nor did the laboratory have the capacity to conduct the number of tests submitted to the NHS.

The business had also not purchased enough kits to carry out the number of tests it claimed to have done, Mr Sandiford said.

Some of the tests were “simply dumped in a room”, with people’s lives and health potentially endangered as a result of the “false negative results”, he added.

Staff were also “instructed” to send fake negative tests from samples that had never been tested.

RT Diagnostics generated £6.674m between 22 May and 6 June 2021, jurors were told.

“This was all about profit,” said Mr Sandiford.

During this time another similarly titled company, Real Time Diagnostics, was also set up with the sole purpose of opening a bank account into which funds from RT Diagnostics were transferred.

After RT Diagnostics was removed from the government website on 15 June 2021, another firm fronted by Mr Moore, Avery Labs Limited, was set up.

According to Mr Sandiford, Avery Labs was funded, “at least in part”, by money from the bank account belonging to Real Time Diagnostics.

The company was intending to take over from RT Diagnostics in the event it could not get back on the government’s website, the prosecutor said, adding: “[It] attempted to resurrect the cash cow.”

“Significant” amounts of money generated from the operation were also transferred into bank accounts belonging to both Mr Shoukat and Mr Malik, the court heard.

The amounts included an £822,000 payment to Halifax Healthcare, a company run by Mr Shoukat, and £1.22m into Mr Malik’s personal accounts.

The trial continues.