• Video game composer Peter Connelly has been jailed after fraudulently obtaining a second Covid Bounce Back Loan for his company
  • Connelly, known for his work on Tomb Raider, inflated his company’s turnover during the first few months of the pandemic in 2020
  • Insolvency Service investigations have also resulted in the 52-year-old being banned as a company director for six years
  • AnyOldName3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    7 days ago

    Most of the UK’s COVID fraud was from giving out contracts to companies that knew full well that they couldn’t deliver, e.g. a £40 million PPE contract to the landlord of the Health Secretary’s local pup, so it’s not absurd to claim that the point of those contracts wasn’t to save the economy, but rather transfer taxpayer money from the treasury to friends of Conservative Party leadership while there was still something left to loot. There was also lots lost in loans to fictional companies and furlough payments to fictional employees, of which a minority went to small businesses gaming the system, and a lot to organised crime gaming the system and then laundering the money so it couldn’t be traced and recovered (without giving the Serious Fraud Office and National Crime Agency enough budget to hire a workable number of forensic accountants).

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
      11·
      7 days ago

      I didn’t pay attention and now noticed it was a UK story, but isn’t it telling that it still was a common observance regardless of where you are. But I think the UK citizens got treated a bit better than the US, where $400 per household was going to break the country and was meant to cover rent and food for…months.