{"id":796130,"date":"2026-10-08T17:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T17:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/796130\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T17:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T17:00:15","slug":"former-labour-mp-cleared-over-role-in-fraudulent-covid-19-testing-company-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/796130\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Labour MP cleared over role in fraudulent Covid-19 testing company | Coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former Labour<\/a> MP and justice minister has been found not guilty of charges around his role in a fraudulent Covid-19 testing company.<\/p>\n

Shahid Malik, 58, was MP for Dewsbury between 2005 and 2010 and served as a minister in three departments in Gordon Brown\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

Malik was one of five people charged with offences relating to RT Diagnostics, a company that prosecutors said was a \u201ccash cow\u201d set up to take advantage of the UK government\u2019s expanding test-and-trace system in March 2021.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Malik was found not guilty of fraudulent trading, causing a public nuisance and money laundering in a trial at Bradford crown court, which was, unusually, conducted without a jury.<\/p>\n

The trial began in October last year and jurors were sent out to start their deliberations in March. In April, they were discharged by Judge Smith after an allegation of jury tampering.<\/p>\n

Smith took the decision to continue the trial without the jury, and that he would decide on the verdicts.<\/p>\n

The court heard that Malik started the business with the pharmacist and former Labour councillor Faisal Shoukat, 39, when the third national lockdown was ending in March 2021.<\/p>\n

Shoukat was found guilty of all three offences.<\/p>\n

Paul Moore, 57, who had a senior role in RT Diagnostics and was Malik\u2019s office manager when he was an MP, was cleared of causing a public nuisance and of fraudulent trading.<\/p>\n

Lynn Connell, 64, a manager at the company, and Alexander Zarneh, 70, who was its clinical director, were also cleared of the same two offences.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said RT Diagnostics, which made \u00a36.67m in three weeks, was set up in \u201cshoddy and inadequate premises\u201d in Halifax and gave out false negative results to customers.<\/p>\n

The defence barrister, Jonathan Laidlaw KC, said Malik\u2019s role in the business had been \u201cvery limited indeed\u201d and he had acted as \u201ca facilitator \u2013 putting the money up and making introductions\u201d.<\/p>\n

Giving his closing speech to jurors in March, Laidlaw said Malik never went to the premises when it was in operation.<\/p>\n

He told the court that for most of the time the business was operating, Malik was out of the country and there was no evidence he was told about any of its issues while he was abroad.<\/p>\n

Laidlaw said the fact that the former MP had made money from RT Diagnostics \u201ccan\u2019t possibly be the basis for a guilty verdict\u201d.<\/p>\n

The court heard that as the third national lockdown was ending in March 2021, the government was looking to expand its test-and-trace system by increasing the number of laboratories offering PCR testing.<\/p>\n

The defendants were accused of \u201ctaking advantage\u201d of that process with an \u201cinadequate and non-compliant\u201d testing company which, prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford KC said, \u201cgenerated a suspiciously low number of positive results\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sandiford said the Halifax laboratory was set up in inadequate premises with holes in the walls and ceilings, and rubbish strewn around.<\/p>\n

Jurors heard that the company employed \u201cnumerous young people who had little or no training in the handling of Covid-19 samples\u201d and set them to work with no social distancing and no personal protective equipment.<\/p>\n

Malik and Sadiq Khan, now London mayor, were the first British-born Muslims to become MPs, and Malik was the first to become a government minister.<\/p>\n

He was appointed as an international development minister in 2007 and he later had ministerial jobs at the Department of Justice and the Department for Communities and Local Government<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Labour MP and justice minister has been found not guilty of charges around his role in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-796130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}