Tony Blair advises Covid treaty to become ‘overnight billionaire’

Tony Blair and Dr. Charles Huang in California

By Peter Geoghegan and Russell Scott

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

The former prime minister works for Pasaca, the owner of Innova Medical Group, which has won pandemic contracts worth over £4 billion from the UK government to provide lateral flow tests.

Innova is the subject of controversy over value for money for British taxpayers, with the company's founder, Chinese-American businessman Charles Huang, also accused of spending profits from Covid contracts on luxury aircraft and real estate.

A spokeswoman for Blair said he met and began working with Huang in 2022. The former Labour leader was not involved in Pasaca's Covid testing business, nor did he work with the British government on its behalf.

“Mr Blair's advice has revolved around geopolitical issues and, most recently, a technology company that emerged from the work of Strathclyde University. Mr Huang never asked Mr Blair to lobby in any way or to approach the UK government about Covid testing,” the spokeswoman said.

Huang has said that Innova made a profit of about $2 billion (£1.6 billion) from UK Covid contracts, believed to be one of the highest amounts ever earned by a single pandemic supplier.

Filed in California court documents Released in July and obtained by Democracy for Sale, two of Huang's former partners accuse him of embezzling Pasaca funds and conducting fraudulent wire transfers.

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

A spokesman for Huang said he “strongly denies these baseless allegations. They come from disgruntled former employees who benefited enormously from the company's generosity and are now twisting the truth to satisfy their greed.”

The July court documents also allege that a £50 million donation which Huang transferred to Strathclyde University in Glasgow in 2021 was “invested in entrepreneurial ventures believed to be at least partly under Huang's control”. The businessman's former associates claim that his “charitable donations are used to conceal illicit and fraudulent offshore transfers”.

Both Huang and Strathclyde University vehemently denied this.

“Dr Huang has no control over the use of this donation and his foundation agrees to its broad use to support research, student scholarships and entrepreneurial activities within the Strathclyde community,” a Strathclyde University spokesperson said.

“The donation from the Charles Huang Foundation will enable the university to expand its ongoing collaboration with business, industry and the public sector to address the major challenges of our time,” the spokesperson added.

As the guardian As previously reported, Huang is also involved in legal battles with other former business partners who have accused him of being a “high-end conman” who squandered or shifted “more than a billion dollars in assets generated from sales in the UK” for his own purposes.

Huang was a relatively unknown businessman before his fortunes changed when Innova was put on the fast track as a supplier after its British partners – who are now also in legal dispute with Innova – sent an email in July 2020 to Dominic Cummings, adviser to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Innova was the only provider of rapid Covid tests for four months during the crisis, which National Audit Office warns that there were “value for money risks”. Innova said it had been “successful in a highly competitive tender process” and that its testing had been completed cost-effectively and on time.

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

Blair, who advised Keir Starmer on the Labour Party's path from opposition to power, had previously come under criticism for his cooperation with controversial partners.

Customers 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. The relationship continues even 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 TBI events at this week's Labour conference.

Blair's institute said Huang had been carefully vetted. Blair's policy is not to lobby the government on behalf of companies or businesses.

Jo Maugham, founder of the Good Law Project, said: “There are very legitimate concerns about how this small firm, now rocked by numerous allegations of fraud and misconduct, was able to win public contracts worth over £4 billion. And that Tony Blair saw fit to become an adviser to the Innova founder also raises questions about his judgement.”

Baron Prem Sikka, an accountant and Labour peer, said Blair's association with Pasaca was “another page in the story… of leading current and former political officials. [being] available for rent”.

“Tony Blair's phone book and his capacities as a political adviser were built entirely with public money during his time as MP and Prime Minister.”