Tuesday 17 May 2022 07:01 PM 'Large chunk' of £4.3BILLION of taxpayers' cash is going to terrorists and ... trends now
Labour shadow Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq has raised concern that 'a large chunk' of taxpayers' cash has been lost through Covid support schemes to terrorists and organised crime.
Ms Siddiq also asked for 'reassurances' that the government was acting to address the £4.3 billion fraudulently lost to criminals like a gang who ran a stolen car chop-shop who secured £145,000-worth of loans.
Other cases of abuse include a hitman, brothel owner, a gangland murderer and a drugs kingpin who helped swindle £100,000s in Covid-19 handouts and reports of people smuggling pandemic cash out of the country in suitcases.
Along with the billions in taxpayers money lost to fraud, officials have conceded as much as £17billion out of the £47billion in bounce back loans will not be paid back.
Ms Siddiq asked for 'reassurances' that the government was acting to address the £4.3 billion fraudulently lost to criminals like a group of car thieves who secured £145,000-worth of loans. Pictured: A stolen vehicle stripped of its parts in a chop shop raided by officers from Operation Norma. The Oldham-based gang got Covid loans and stole 70 luxury cars worth £2.25million
Left to right: Asif Hussain (who received £50,000 in Covid bounce back loans) and Ibraaz Shafique (who got two separate loans, together worth £95,000)
Jonathan Houseman is a Black Country gangland figure was in September jailed for life, with a minimum of 40 years and during lockdown he purchased four largely inactive companies that could each be used to raise £50,000 via a bounce-back loan
Other cases of abuse include a pub landlord who pocketed £29,000 in fake 'consultancy fees', a soft drinks company owner who inflated his turnover by 100 times to get the maximum loan, and a restaurant boss who was given a loan despite having been evicted from his premises for failing to pay rent.
The total figure could also be a lot higher from all the Covid programmes - not just the bounce back loan scheme.
The estimated £15.7billion is also said to 'just the tip of the iceberg', a fraud expert said, as more cases emerge.
Ms Siddiq told the Commons: 'The Government has lost £4.3 billion of taxpayers' money through fraudulent Covid schemes and now we are learning that a large chunk of this money is going into the hands of terrorists, into organised crime gangs, and into the hands of drug dealers.'
She asked for assurances that the Government is 'actually taking these reports seriously' and asked how many investigations related to Covid fraud are under way.
Treasury minister John Glen said: 'The Government takes this very seriously and that's why the Chancellor has invested at previous fiscal events £100 million in a taskforce to deal with this.
'Indeed, when we designed a number of these interventions, protecting taxpayers was a very real consideration, but it is also the case that we needed to act swiftly in order to assist those businesses.
'Some of the interventions, had we made them at the time, would have meant that many businesses would have
