Tony Blair advises Covid contract ‘overnight billionaire’

Tony Blair and Dr. Charles Huang in California

By Peter Geoghegan and Russell Scott

Tony Blair is a paid political and business adviser to a controversial investment group that has made billions of pounds from British taxpayers by supplying Covid-19 tests, Democracy for Sale has revealed.

The former prime minister works for Pasaca, owner of Innova Medical Group, which was awarded more than £4bn in pandemic contracts by the UK government to provide lateral flow testing.

Innova has been the subject of controversy over its value for money for British taxpayers. The company’s founder, Chinese-American businessman Charles Huang, has also been accused of splashing profits from Covid contracts on luxury jets and real estate.

A spokeswoman for Blair said he met Huang in 2022 and began working with him. He said the former Labour leader was not involved in Pasaca’s Covid testing activities or in any interactions with the British government on his behalf.

“Mr Blair’s advice has been on geopolitical issues and latterly on a technology company that emerged from work done at Strathclyde University. Mr Huang has never asked Mr Blair to lobby or engage with the UK government in any way on Covid testing,” the spokeswoman said.

Huang has said that Innova made around $2 billion (£1.6 billion) in profit from UK Covid contracts, reportedly one of the largest amounts received by a single supplier during the pandemic.

In court documents filed in California in July and obtained by Democracy for Sale, two of Huang’s former associates accuse him of embezzling Pasaca funds and making fraudulent wire transfers.

Huang is accused of spending millions of dollars of Covid-19 profits on a private jet, homes for his family and mistresses, and transferring $200 million to overseas accounts in case he had to flee the United States. A proposed biography of Huang’s life was titled “Overnight Billionaire.”

A spokesman for Huang said he “vehemently denies these baseless allegations. They were made by disgruntled former employees who benefited greatly from the company’s largesse and are now manipulating the truth to satisfy their greed.”

The July court documents also show that a £50 million donation Huang’s 2021 study at Strathclyde University in Glasgow was “invested in entrepreneurial ventures believed to be at least partly controlled” by Huang. The businessman’s former associates allege his “charitable distributions are made for the purpose of concealing unlawful and fraudulent offshore transfers”

Both Huang and Strathclyde University strongly denied this.

“Dr Huang has no control over the use of this gift and his foundation consents to its broad use, which is aimed at supporting research, student scholarships and entrepreneurial activities within the Strathclyde community,” a spokesperson for the University of Strathclyde said.

“The Charles Huang Foundation’s donation enables the university to expand its ongoing collaboration with business, industry and the public sector to address the grand challenges of our time,” the spokesperson added.

If the guard It was previously reported that Huang is also embroiled in legal disputes with other former business partners who accuse him of being a “top-tier fraudster” who squandered or moved for his own use “more than $1 billion in… assets generated from sales in the United Kingdom.”

Huang was a relatively unknown businessman until his fortunes turned when Innova gained momentum as a supplier after the UK partners – who are now also embroiled in a legal dispute with Innova – sent an email to Dominic Cummings, an adviser to then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in July 2020.

Innova became the sole supplier of rapid Covid tests for four months during the crisis, leading to the National Audit Office warns that there were “risks to value for money”. Innova said it had been “successful in a highly competitive tender process” and that the tests were cost-effective and delivered on time.

Huang has alleged in civil lawsuits that two former executives defrauded Innova of more than $100 million, charges they deny.

Blair, who advised Keir Starmer as Labour transitioned from opposition party to party in power, has previously faced criticism for his work with controversial partners.

Our clients included the authoritarian governments of Kazakhstan And AzerbaijanThe Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) has also advised Saudi Arabia on social and economic reforms, with the relationship continuing after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Health Minister Wes Streeting, Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Science Minister Peter Kyle all attended the TBI meetings at this week’s Labour conference.

Blair’s institute indicated that due diligence had been done on Huang. Blair has a policy of not lobbying the government on behalf of a company or business.

Jo Maugham, founder of the Good Law Project, said: “There are very real concerns about how this small company, now embroiled in multiple allegations of fraud and misconduct, won more than £4bn in government contracts. And that Tony Blair saw fit to become an adviser to Innova’s founder also raises questions about his judgement.”

Baron Prem Sikka, an accountant and Labour peer, said Blair’s work with Pasaca was “a new page in the story of… leading current and former political office holders (being) available for hire”.

“Tony Blair’s phone book and political consultancy capacity were built entirely on public money during his time as an MP and Prime Minister.”