Fraudsters might have stolen as much as £37 billion of Covid money from the public purse, experts say. The Mail on Sunday has more.
The staggering sum, based on an analysis by academics from the University of Oxford, is vastly higher than previous estimates, and more than double the £16 billion presented as a possibility to the Public Accounts Committee earlier this year.
In a damning review of the latest evidence from several public bodies, the report says criminal organisations – who were ‘fraud ready’ before the pandemic – took advantage of the ‘reckless’ lack of anti-fraud measures to siphon huge amounts from Government initiatives such as the Bounce Back Loan Scheme and Eat Out To Help Out.
Around 374 such schemes were introduced by various Government departments during 2020 and 2021 to support individuals and businesses hit hard by Covid measures, as well as to further research and support vaccine development.
The National Audit Office’s Covid cost tracker estimates that they have cost £370 billion to implement.
But the Oxford team’s review, which was given to the Mail on Sunday ahead of being published Saturday, concludes ‘at least ten per cent’ of the cash – equivalent to £37 billion, or one third of the total NHS annual budget – is likely to have been lost to fraud.
“When the decision to put into place severe and unprecedented restrictions was taken, governmental support for those worst affected was a sensible and humane act, regardless of the sums involved,” the review read.
“However, because of the size of the programmes and the speed with which they were put in place, anti-fraud checks should have been part of the programmes. However, in several instances, they were not.
“If we add the lack of pandemic preparation, the Government’s appetite for hasty risk-taking fed by flawed predictions of modellers and general media frenzy, together with the fragmentation of anti-fraud activities, all these factors created a greenhouse effect for criminals to fleece the public purse.”
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, last night condemned the scale of the fraud highlighted by the review.
“Abuse of the Covid schemes will appal hard-working taxpayers, who will ultimately have to foot the bill,” he said.
“Support had to be deployed quickly without reams of red tape tying things up, but the scale of the abuse will shock those who played by the rules while worrying about their jobs and families.
“Ministers should protect taxpayers with more stringent measures to fine and prosecute the fraudsters that fiddled the system.”
The detailed analysis, which focused on the largest of the government schemes, was carried out by Dr Tom Jefferson and Professor Carl Heneghan, from the CEBM.
Worth reading in full.
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“Fraudsters might have stolen as much as £37 billion of Covid money from the public purse, experts say.”
£37 billion? Small change in the scheme of things but it sounds good.
Come on DS et al. These are but parasitic lice and fleas sucking of the true fraudsters who won’t even feel their loss whilst absorbed in their gorging.
Best deal with the host first.
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No doubt HMRC and Fishy Niknak will write the whole amount off, as none of it was their money.
I am ashamed to say that HMRC employed me at one time and I’ve never worked for a more incompetent organisation.
The biggest fraudsters are friends/relatives of the govt and predator class generally.
“Ministers should protect taxpayers with more stringent measures to fine and prosecute the fraudsters that fiddled the system.”
Putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.
And how much was “awarded” to friends, cronies and acquaintances of Ministers by way of contracts to supply PPE etc
Personally, I see little difference …. both are corruption.
You call it fraud, our political class calls it “reparations”. They know where the money has gone.
Just think how much ivermectin that could have bought. A dose or two for every Uk citizen and a few extras.
Typical central-planned money laundering from the public purse to private companies of friends, family, acolytes and staff, under the auspices of fighting a largely imagined bogeyman for ‘the greater good’. For further reading see Military-Industrial bogeymen, Climate Change bogeymen, Social Justice bogeymen etc.
If our money was real, linked to gold, silver or economic output, then we would have to think carefully about how it is used before chucking it down the drain on frauds, perverse social welfare and white elephant pseudopandemics. But really they know its unlimited meaningless digits with no immediate accountability, so they waste it.
Currency debasment is an aspect of declining empires. As is decadence, hubris and greed, infighting, treachery and war etc. All are features of declining civilisation and not unique ‘bugs’ to the Wests current regression. Its also why conspiracy theories about the deliberate sabotage of Western civilisation by some shadowy group are absurd, unless one also believes the Mongol empire, Roman empire, Ottoman empire, Persian empire, Mesopotamian empire, Sumerian empire, Chinese empires etc were all sabotaged in the same way, presumably by the same omnipresent shadowy group of, what, ancient aliens, pagan ‘bloodlines’, lizards?
Human nature never changes which is why “history never… Read more »
Come on, Pfeffel and Co stole a whole lot more than that with the covid scam, and now we’re financially ruined.
Is this governmental ‘fraud revelation’ an example of “limited hangout” that someone posted about? It rather comes across as a diversion from the evidence of a much greater Establishment fraud:
– that which facilitated a mass transfer of wealth to near-monopoly business concerns during and as a result of lockdown and through the destruction and impairment of small and medium sized enterprises; and
– that which facilitated mass uptake of the so-called vaccines which has led to so many injuries and deaths, which are ongoing.
“The government is reported to have spent over £400 billion on Covid measures, around nine times the annual defence budget. The expenditure has been financed by the creation of “new money” by the Bank of England, which has led to significant inflation and higher taxes.”
– from J.D. WETHERSPOON PLC Preliminary Results Statement correction 18 March 2022.
So Mr Martin has pointed out the elephant in the room: the massive inflationary effect caused by the BOE; and all for a ‘flu like coronavirus that has a 99.97% or better recovery rate.
As for the medical fraud:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/EcEnEtE3xrwQ/
“Depopulation? Vaccine Data Analysis by Dr. Shankara Chetty with predictions about what will happen!”
Dr. Shankara… Read more »
Bad News For Tony Fauci As New Report Surrounding Wuhan Lab Leak Cover Up Comes
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Oh come on Toby, why not a picture of the fraudster in chief BBBBumbling Boris Corbyn?
Poor Arfur Daly is as white as the driven snow compared to him
Digital currency has been mentioned here a few times in terms of government controlling spending etc, some have suggested that it could be loosely linked to the covid experiment and passport control etc. I have to admit I don’t understand how one currency will operate on a worldwide scale, given the existing tension in commodity trading between countries.
I think “countries” won’t exist any more – not in the current sense – it will be like a world federation of states or something like that.
Don’t worry about it too much; I’m sure some bright spark in the WEF has it all sorted out and will publish a PDF on it imminently.
Wishful thinking, much as I suspected.
Completely OT, but something potentially very big in the curency markets has just happened. Russia ha announced its linking the ruble to gold and will accept payments of gas/oil/commodities in gold. This will have a devastatating effect on the paper gold market and has already hardened the ruble/USD exchange rate. It remains to be seen the full implications if, as seems likely other selling nations of commodities take the same route. It could see the USD reserve currency/petrodollar status in severe jeopardy.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to know whether Western policies are designed to cause self-harm or that our current set of “leaders” are the dumbest in history.
The latter, I suspect. Imagine if Britain had been headed by Johnson and the US by Biden in the period from 1941 to 1945, rather than by Churchill and FDR.
No, don’t – it doesn’t bear thinking about.
I think it is actually that they are designed to cause self- harm.
I skimmed the news headlines this morning in particular and had that very thought – if politicians actively set out to screw things up on a spectacular basis then it must be high fives and fist bumps all round today – not to mention another bonus deposited in the Swissbank account.
Now you’re getting it…
Does this have anything to do with the USA and Canada flooding the market with oil, presumable to drive down oil prices, or as they suggest, help out the consumer.
It will.
It’s a good job the UK has plenty of gold reserves, then! …. err….!
Never mind, ‘Diversity’ is our strength… we’ll just have to get by on that.
There would have been howls of protest from the press and blogs like this when businesses went down the tubes and families starved if these payments had been delayed to allow time for proper anti-fraud checks. Get real, any scheme in which you can get oodles of cash just for filling in some forms will attract professional fraudsters and most of this money will have been had away by organised criminal gangs and is now in Dubai or similar offshore hideaways for dirty money.
Excluding big pharma?
Did somebody mention fraudsters?
“A Halifax Covid testing facility has hit back at ‘ludicrous and defamatory’ accusations made by The Sun about the way the firm is handling Covid tests.
The article published by The Sun said that RT Diagnostics, in Francis Street, were: “dumping thousands of returned Covid tests in the bin while issuing fit-to-fly certificates to customers.”
RT Diagnostics was set up in April 2021 to provide Covid testing to people who are leaving or entering the country. It is run by Faisal Shoukat, a Labour Councillor for Calderdale Council.”
“AVOID at all cost! Pure fraud in its form, there is a group on Facebook where people discussing horrible experiences with this company!”
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.rtdiagnostics.co.uk?stars=1
Why am I not surprised.
Nothing surprises me nowadays.
Abuse of the Covid schemes will appal hard-working taxpayers, who will ultimately have to foot the bill,” he said.
What he didn’t say was “from the increased income obtained from selling things to fraudsters”
It should have been better designed but ultimately tax fraud is stimulative to a depressed economy.
I know many people won’t like to hear that, but the numbers don’t lie.
I’m confident that not a single one of these criminals will come to me for personal tax advice.
Just as I am unable to locate the extra savings you claim I have as a result of the massive extra govertmnent borrowing over the last 2 years.
Yes and the mafia have really helped the italian economy tick along.
£37bn + £35bn+ Track and trace+ £35bn plus to Big Pharma for useless snake oil
Omni fraud
Omnishakedown
Nailed it
Whether by design or not, Covid seems to have been in large part an asset stripping exercise. Public money has been brought into existence and then stolen and presumably used to buy physical assets, enabling oligarchs the world over to retain their power in the face of inevitable collapse. The only result i can see at this point is revolution, which will be a western phenomenon. The dream of herding everyone into a digital slavery system is a pipe dream I think. These are the worst, most corrupt, most unimaginative people earth. I rate their chances of still being on top at the end of all this at zero.
I’m very glad to see you say so.
I believe that their detachment from humanity at large and from normal human constraints has led them into over-reaching: both with regard to the whole Covid exercise and the events concerning Ukraine.
They have pushed too hard and they are now over-exposed. Millions are deeply suspicious of these people who prefer to operate out of sight; because they are forcing themselves into our lives on a direct, daily basis. They have created, for us, an existential crisis.
Russia, as a nation state with an intense cultural history of resistance to invasion and occupation, has also been placed in an existential crisis in the last eight years or so – largely by the ambitions of western oligarchs (and their allies), intent on plunder.
It’s now engaged in an action/response situation which is shaking the economic world in which oligarchs have risen to such overweening heights.
I wouldn’t call Russia a nation state: its territory has huge areas where the indigenous population isn’t even Slavic.
In nineteenth-century terms it wouldn’t be, but the nation state has evolved since then; largely through a combination of mass migration and mass education.
The “intense cultural history” to which I referred could be more properly described as that of the Russian heartland, but we shouldn’t forget that the Red Army of the Second World War included many who were not Slavic in origin, binding them in a national project.
Yes it does feel as though Russia has called the West’s bluff and will come out of this stronger than the countries currently feigning hypocritical outrage. A dying empire is a dangerous thing; maybe the Russians decided now was the time to clean up the vicinity (I’m thinking bioweapon labs and nuclear facilities) ahead of the presumed chaos.
It has self-sufficiency in food and energy, enormous resources and gold reserves, and a leadership that (whatever else it is) is not stupid.
I really hope you are right Crisisgarden.
On Friday night’s edition of GB News Mark Dolan interviewed an incredible guy called Yaron Brook Yaron Brook – Wikipedia
He’s like a sort of economic/political version of Jurgen Klopp – same energy, enthusiasm and positivity. During the interview, I was nodding along and agreeing with absolutely everything he said. You should have heard his dissection of the state of the NHS in the UK!
When Dolan asked him whether we would ever get our freedoms and our liberty back after what had happened over the course of the last 2 years, he said that it would take a long time, and that we would have to do the educating to create the circumstances which would bring about the changes which would enable us to get them back.
I will look out for it thanks!
Agreed. Although theres no reason to believe others won’t revolt too. The Chinese regularly revolt, sometimes twice a century, for millenia. Shanghai has seen some mostly peaceful upheaval in the past week. Even collectivist societies have a limit.
Taboo citizen reporting videos from China, purportedly.
It seems a stretch to think anyone would continue tolerating this, let alone if it escalated.
https://twitter.com/songpinganq
Dont worry. All the highly skilled, hard working dingy people will earn us it back in no time.
Never mind, they will double up the investigations on small businesses who might have made small overclaims, and hurriedly put them out of business for the odd £100.
This is EXACTLY what will happen. They will ignore the clever fraudsters and prosecute to the utmost limit the little people who may have made an innocent mistake.
This is entirely typical of the bloated, incompetent and inefficient public sector. Civil servants, who are neither civil nor servile, are not interested in serving the public; they are ONLY interested in stealing as much money as possible from those who are working for a REAL living.
Absolutely.
Just like the financial fraud causing the crash in 2008 or the PPI scandal, did we see any meaningful effort to prosecute big banks or bankers?
Nope, but what we did see was a systematic dismantling of the sub-prime financial sector by the establishment with a combination of diverting blame and virtue signalling (sound familiar?), supported by useful idiots (ie. Stella Creasey), culminating in their eventual big win when Wonga went bust.
Hooray! – victory for the little man against the nasty usurers right? Err, not quite. The only reason Wonga was able to come into existence was because of the obscenely high overdraft charges being applied by the big banks. People were actually better off going to a payday lender than incurring these overdraft charges.
But the establishment had found its bogeyman, the MSM got behind the witch-hunt, and the real criminality was gently swept under the carpet.
In true “Yes, Minister” fashion.
When you think about it this £37Billion is money lost through waste or fraud by one grossly incompetent highly centralised national government – can you imagine the astronomical amounts of money being lost through waste and fraud currently going on in the EU right now – can imagine the collosal amounts of money that would be wasted and lost through fraud should we ever come under the control of a highly centralised global government – the kind of highly centralised totalitarian regime Klaus Schwab wants to usher in along with the rest of the WEF/New World Order mob.
‘The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.’ – Hayek
The next time some ignorant bully, who seems to think that it’sa public-health disease-control situation, berates me about mask-wearing, social distancing and hand-sanitising, I shall remember…
Unfortunately, millions of people will NOT remember.
It’s not a photo of Arthur Daley that should be in the headline. I can think of at least four prominent people who should be there instead.
If I was Arthur Daley I’d be thinking of suing for defamation – however good he was he was no-where near the levels of fraud these people have been capable of.
Taking inflation into account the £370 billion over 2 years is comparable to the debt incurred in fighting WW II for the same period.
My singular goal in life right now is to never pay taxes again or get as close to “Tax Zero” as I can. This government haven’t a clue, I’m actively turning down overtime and pay rises/more responsibility, crypto generation/investment, investing outside ISAs, etc. Why should I sacrifice and risk(!) my currency and life capital to give over half away to be wasted by w***ers on wasters.
You’ll pay whatever they tell you to pay when the new new central bank digital currency is rolled out.
We’ll see
So, on top of the rest of the wasted lockdown money, these “bribes” were sprayed around with abandon, with no checking. More proof that this lot are Socialist in nature.
Bring on the costs of Net Zero next, the plebs wont notice.
Are not the vaccine makers and their government facilitators the biggest fraudsters of all. Big Pharma is being paid hundreds of billions for products that don’t work and is in the process of killing millions?
Yes, it’s called the pharmaceutical industry and the number is currently approaching $500 billion.
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/04/02/distracted-russia-moderna-created-virus-and-vaccine-before-release/
I confess that I’ve not read the document but if your understanding is correct and the document is genuine it all begins to make sense. If true, the fact that the vaccine did not work is largely academic, they still benefitted at the expense of everyone not in on the scam, courtesy of ‘hopeless worldwide government oversight’, I use those last four words in the loosest possible sense.
The “vaccines” have worked but not in the way they were sold to the public.
In terms of maiming and killing, which is the real purpose of the injections they have been a great success, as will be seen in the coming years.
It’s very difficult to avid coming to that conclusion – at least at higher levels of manufacture and distribution.
We don’t want to believe it, because it forces us to consider our relationship with evil.
But when Mike Yeadon insists that certain people had to know what the “vaccines” were, I find him convincing. I see an exhausted, deeply concerned and knowledgeable man, acting under genuine moral compulsion.
What is utterly shocking is that information disclosed by the likes of The Daily Expos confirming that C1984 was brewed in a lab, years before its “official” release, is not headline news.
Indeed I would imagine there are concerted MSM/OFCOM efforts to make sure that speculation of that nature (as they would likely term it) gets shut down PDQ and dissed as “conspiracy theory”/misinformation
https://www.northcarolina.edu/news/ralph-baric-receives-o-max-gardner-award-for-coronavirus-research/