‘Happy days if you were a crook’: former minister slams UK Covid loan scheme

theguardian.com:

Treasury officials trying to stop fraudsters making off with vast Covid loans have been called a “Dad’s Army operation” by a former Tory minister who condemned the lacklustre bid to stop “suitcases of cash leaving the country”.

Lord Agnew, who quit as the government’s anti-fraud minister earlier this year, said the first few months of taxpayer-funded emergency loans being issued were “happy days for crooks”.

In an eviscerating assessment of the government’s attempt to avoid the loans being given to untraceable companies, Agnew said he was “genuinely completely dumbfounded” why the operation was not properly resourced.

He revealed it took officials six weeks to create a system that could catch fraudsters making duplicate claims for the loans, which were designed to keep businesses afloat. However, he added by that time “60% of the money had already gone out of the door”.

He recalled: “I was writing letters of congratulations to Border Force staff for picking up suitcases of cash leaving the country. It was happy days if you were a crook in those first few months.”

Out of a potential 100,000 fraud cases, Agnew said just 49 had resulted in arrest – a figure he branded a “disgrace”.

He claimed the economic crime bill, passed by MPs on Monday, was a “start” but only fixed around a quarter of the problems that needed solving in tackling serious offences, such as money laundering.

Agnew admitted he was “very worried” that ministers would claim the bill would solve all the issues and warned that would be an “absolute tragedy”.

In a direct attack on the most senior civil servant in the Treasury – the department in which Agnew used to be a minister – he also said that a letter he received from Tom Scholar “embodies everything about the