Scientist 'innocent' over Covid fraud, court told

A scientist accused of telling "significant lies" to facilitate an alleged bogus coronavirus testing operation is an "innocent man", his barrister has said.

Dr Alexander Zarneh, from Halifax, is one of five people accused of fraudulent trading and causing a public nuisance over his role at RT Diagnostics.

In his closing speech, Dr Zarneh's barrister, Paul Jarvis KC, insisted his client was an external consultant hired to help the business gain accreditation and not someone who held a senior management role in the company.

Dr Zarneh, of Wood Lane, and his co-defendants Faisal Shoukat, 38, former justice minister Shahid Malik, 58, Paul Moore, 56, and Lynn Connell, 64, deny all of the charges against them.

Addressing the court, Mr Jarvis said Dr Zarneh, 70, was an "innocent man", adding: "There is no evidence that's capable of proving his guilt."

All five defendants are accused of playing significant roles at RT Diagnostics, which prosecutors allege "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.

Dr Zarneh, a scientist registered with the Health and Care Professions Council, was said to have been the company's clinical director, according to documentation shown to the court.

Prosecutors allege he was "instrumental" in making applications for accreditation from the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) and told "significant lies" to the organisation about his role in the operation.

It is claimed that as a result of his deception RT Diagnostics was added to the government's list of test providers.

Prosecutors have said that between May and July 2021 RT Diagnostics reported 123,104 tests, but only 45 of these were positive results, with 123,058 showing as negative and one indeterminate.

The firm is said to have generated £6.67m in income over 31 days between 16 May and 16 June 2021.

Addressing the jury, Mr Jarvis said Dr Zarneh's role was merely to "advise and assist" the company in gaining the accreditation it needed to operate.

"You can call someone one thing without that necessarily being their job," he said.

Mr Jarvis said his client never visited the RT Diagnostics laboratory at Park Works and had acted on information provided to him by the company in its accreditation application.

"Why would he be querying, questioning, challenging, demanding different information to the information he was provided with?," Mr Jarvis asked jurors.

He said Dr Zarneh had no prior involvement with the other defendants before undertaking work for RT Diagnostics and had spent 40 years working for the NHS before becoming a consultant,

He said Dr Zarneh had received a "comparatively modest fee" of £2,390 for his work on behalf of the company

"Forty years in the National Health Service and the case against him is that he's set out to damage the health of the public - risk people dying - for the sum of £2,390.

"There's absolutely no sense in that."

The jury is expected to begin its deliberations on Friday, five months after the trial began.

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