A judge who cleared a former Labour minister over his role in a fraudulent Covid-19 testing firm said he “could not be sure” he knew the business was providing false negative results.
Shahid Malik was found not guilty of three offences relating to RT Diagnostics, which prosecutors said made £6.67 million in three weeks, but was a “shoddy and inadequate” service.
The 58-year-old, who became the MP for Dewsbury in 2005 and was a justice minister and communities minister before losing his seat in 2010, was one of five people charged over the company.
Verdicts delivered by judge after jury discharged
The verdicts were delivered by a judge, who discharged the jury in the trial after an allegation of jury tampering during their deliberations. One juror was arrested.
Judge Christopher Smith cleared Mr Malik of fraudulent trading, causing a public nuisance and money laundering.
He found pharmacist and former Labour councillor Faisal Shoukat, 39, who started the business with Malik, guilty of all three offences.
Judge’s ruling on RT Diagnostics
Continuing to deliver his ruling at Bradford Crown Court on Friday, Judge Smith said he did not believe that RT Diagnostics was set up with a purpose of providing false negative results, but that this started happening when the centre could not keep up with the numbers of tests being submitted by customers.
He said: “By the end of the evidence, I was left in no doubt that there had come a time when the laboratory simply could not cope.
“The service was, frankly, swamped by a demand fuelled by prices that were kept deliberately low.
“On top of that, the service was beset by additional problems stemming from difficulties with Royal Mail collection and delivery and with customers struggling to properly engage with the Recova-19 platform.
“The solution which, in my judgment proved to be irresistible, was simply to provide fake or false results to customers and there came a time when, in my judgment, the evidence demonstrates that it became the purpose of RT Diagnostics to trade in that way.”
The judge said that for most of the time RT Diagnostics was operating in 2021, Mr Malik was out of the country and only visited the premises in Halifax, West Yorkshire, once, at an early stage.
He said the former MP’s role had been to link former Calderdale councillor Shoukat with contacts in Turkey who could supply equipment for the testing kits.
“In those circumstances, I cannot be sure that he knew that RT Diagnostics was providing an unreliable testing service or was distributing false test results,” the judge said.
Evidence and other verdicts
The court heard that in July 2021 The Sun published an article about the company, with footage filmed by employees showing boxes of untested samples.
Judge Smith said: “I have a very real suspicion that when the expose video was published (Mr Malik) was aware at that point that there were very significant problems at RT Diagnostics – I do not consider it to be a mere coincidence that very large sums of money said to represent dividends were removed from the Starling Bank account at around that time.”
He went on to say: “However, suspicion is not enough – I cannot be sure that he knew that such problems as there were at RT Diagnostics involved the provision of an unreliable testing service or the distribution of false results.
“It is equally probable that (Mr Malik) considered there to be fundamental reputational issues or that he had concerns relating to regulatory compliance and so he is entitled to the benefit of the doubt when I am answering this question.”
The judge said: “(Mr Malik) clearly had some responsibility for the day-to-day running of RT Diagnostics insofar as there was a time when he was the sole signatory for the Starling Bank account in the name of Real Time Diagnostics.
“However, I do not consider that that role amounted to involvement as a manager or controller of a part of the business which was involved in providing fake or false test results.”
The trial heard RT Diagnostics failed to carry out tests which consumers had ordered, provided false test results and failed to ensure samples and test results were properly handled, stored and reported.
The court heard how only 45 positive results were reported from 138,738 PCR tests between May 21 and July 21 2021 – with 99.96% of results reported as negative.
Prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford KC said customers who complained enough were told their result was negative, when in fact their sample had not been tested.
He said this meant that people who ought to have been self-isolating were going out in public.
Explaining his guilty verdicts for Shoukat, Judge Smith said the defendant was “a generous and caring individual” but was also “ambitious and keenly motivated to succeed financially”.
“He is plainly a very experienced and highly capable prescribing pharmacist but ultimately he had no experience in running a commercial testing laboratory,” he said.
“I firmly believe that the money he believed he could generate – and later saw coming into the accounts – operated to distract him from making a proper assessment as to his own capabilities in this field.”
He said Shoukat’s “overarching and ‘hands-on’ role at RT Diagnostics” meant he was “positively involved in the provision of an unreliable Covid-19 testing service and one which provided false Covid-19 test results to customers”.
The judge said: “I am entirely satisfied that (Shoukat) knew that his laboratory was failing to test samples at scale – the sheer size and quantity of the boxes visible in The Sun video are but one illustration of how that much would have been obvious to him.
“I am equally satisfied that he knew that the integrity of the testing regime was being compromised because instructions were being given to staff to ‘send the negative’.”
Paul Moore, 57, who had a senior role in RT Diagnostics, and was Malik’s office manager when he was an MP, was cleared of causing a public nuisance and fraudulent trading.
Manager at the company Lynn Connell, 64, and registered scientist Alexander Zarneh, 70, who was its clinical director, were cleared of the same two offences.
Shoukat will be sentenced on December 4.
