Ex-MP main beneficiary of Covid fraud, court told
BBCA former government minister was the main beneficiary of the profits generated by an "unreliable and sometimes outright false" coronavirus testing service, a jury has been told.
Shahid Malik is one of five people on trial at Bradford Crown Court over their involvement with RT Diagnostics during the pandemic.
Prosecutors allege the firm "purported to be a testing laboratory" when in reality tests were "dumped in a room" with customers sent fake negative results for the deadly virus, thereby endangering people's health.
Mr Malik, 57, who lost his Dewsbury seat in 2010 after being elected in 2005, denies fraudulent trading, causing a public nuisance and money laundering.
On Tuesday the prosecution finished summing up their case against the five defendants, who all deny fraudulent trading and causing a public nuisance.
It has been alleged that RT Diagnostics, which made £6.67m in 31 days between 16 May and 16 June 2021, was set up in "shoddy and inadequate premises" in Halifax and generated a "suspiciously low" number of positive results.
Mr Malik, a director of the company, was the "main beneficiary" of the profits, according to Jonathan Sandiford KC.
"[He] was so much more than somebody who invested money in all this," the prosecutor said.
"Nobody had greater interest in what was going on than him."
The trial previously heard how Mr Malik, from Burnley, was paid "just under" £1.5m in dividends from RT Diagnositcs.
Mr Sandiford admitted Mr Malik was not involved in the firm on a day-to-day basis, but added: "Neither was he just a sleeping director or investor."
He said Mr Malik, who lived and worked abroad for some of 2021, connected the company with a Turkish firm which supplied test kits not approved for use in the UK, and was involved in email chains about the running of RT Diagnostics.
He also retained joint control of its bank account, even after resigning as director, and made a payment for laboratory equipment.
After "things went wrong" for RT Diagnostics, he helped fund another company, Avery Labs, which Mr Sandiford said was "trying again to do the same thing".
According to the prosecutor, Mr Malik's co-accused, former Calderdale councillor and pharmacist Faisal Shoukat, who has also been charged with money laundering, was "at the heart of day-to-day operations".
Mr Shoukat, 38, was also a director of RT Diagnostics. He was the only defendant to offer evidence in the trial.
GoogleDewsbury East councillor Paul Moore, who previously worked as Mr Malik's constituency office manager, is also on trial with the pair along with Lynn Connell, from Ripponden, and Dr Alexander Zarneh, from Halifax.
Mr Sandiford said Mr Moore, 56, was operations director at RT Diagnostics "not just in name, in role" and a member of the company's senior management team.
He later became director of Avery Labs, but omitted his experience at RT Diagnostics from an application to an accrediting body.
Mr Sandiford told jurors: "You may find it difficult to think, to conceive, how he would have missed that out for any other reason than wanting to conceal his real experience."
Mrs Connell, 64, was described as a "loyal lieutenant" and was another member of the senior management team at RT Diagnostics, termed "the big guns" by Mr Sandiford.
Meanwhile, Dr Zarneh, a scientist, played a "crucial role" by "allowing his good name to be put forward" with accreditors.
The 70-year-old was "meant to be the person who ensured this was all done properly," Mr Sandiford said.
Addressing the jury in his closing speech, the prosecutor said: "Covid testing was intended to prevent, to stop the spread of this highly dangerous disease. It was potentially fatal.
"All these defendants either knew, or had the means of knowing, that the provision of an unreliable and sometimes outright false testing service, of which they all contributed to in various ways, created a risk to health and life."
The trial continues.
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