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Category: Lies, Scams and Criminality

Government awards “Test and Trace” contract to Serco, failure ensues

Serco’s privatised Covid contact-tracing system didn’t cost £37bn (that figure included millions of tests too) but it was still mired in controversy at great cost. For months the “world-beating” programme pledged by Boris Johnson didn’t materialise with contact-tracers failing to reach thousands of infected people and an app’s launch being repeatedly delayed.

Conservatives refuse to publish donors’ names

Boris Johnson has dropped the practice of publishing attendees at the ‘Leader’s Group’ dining club, for people who give the Conservative Party over £50k. Past records of attendees – where donors rub shoulders with the PM without notes being taken – were scrubbed from the Tory website. And an ‘Advisory Board’ of £250k donors has since been set up. Promises of transparency were made after a 2012 row involving ex-Tory Treasurer Peter Cruddas… who Boris Johnson has now made a Lord. Three days after beginning his peerage, Lord Cruddas donated £500k to the party.

Tories return millions of Russian-linked donations

Boris Johnson was urged to hand back millions in Russia-linked Tory Party donations. Banker Lubov Chernukhin, married to Putin’s former deputy finance minister, has donated £1.7m. Alexander Temerko, a businessman born in Soviet Ukraine who insists he is ‘no friend’ of Putin, has donated £1.3m. The Tories defend the donations, saying they are legal and Russian critics of Putin should not be lumped in with pro-Kremlin oligarchs. Boris Johnson also gave media mogul Evgeny Lebedev a peerage in 2020, despite spooks reportedly raising initial concerns over his father’s KGB past. He has also criticised the war in Ukraine.