Page 94, the Private Eye podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

My name is Andrew Hunter Murray and this week we are looking at the big winners of COVID.

I am going to be speaking to Richard Brooks who's been writing the profits of doom

pieces in the magazine over the last several issues all about the companies whose profits have

suddenly mushroomed extraordinarily over the last 18 months due to one calls principally

and that is sloppiness in working out how you're actually going to pay the people

and desperation from the government who needed to throw money at something very quickly

in order to secure tests and PPE.

He's going to be taking us through exactly how that procurement process has been done and bungled

and later on we will also be speaking to Solomon Hughes who is going to be at the other end of

the COVID supply chain. Solomon has been writing about the MUC fraud. MUC stands for Mini Umbrella

Companies. It's a fascinating way that firms have been manipulating official and proper

loopholes in order to make a bit of money on the side and it's the workers themselves at these

firms who spotted it and got in touch with the eye about it. But first, profits of doom.

Richard Brooks has been writing about a lot of the companies which have been making enormous

amounts of money over the last 18 months whether that through PPE providing test and tray services,

various other things associated with COVID-19 and these companies have seen their profits rise

enormously exponentially in some cases which has led to a lot of questions about whether the money,

almost all of which has come obviously from the government has been spent in a reasonable

or a cost effective way. I started off by asking Richard what made him look at this in the first

place. Here he is. When companies that have been winning all these PPE contracts started

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