The UK invested $500 million in a bankrupt satellite operator despite high-level warnings about huge financial risk.
However, a senior government official had warned that the deal was "unusual" and had "stark" risks, the Financial Times reports.Boris Johnson's government signed a deal with a satellite operator worth hundreds of millions of pounds despite the company being bankrupt and a senior official warning that the UK could lose all of its investment.
The department's then-permanent secretary Sam Beckett said in a letter: "While in one scenario we could get a 20 per cent return, the central case is marginal and there are significant downside risks, including that venture capital investments of this sort can fail, with the consequence that all the value of the equity can be lost."
Darren Jones, Labour member of Parliament and chair of the UK Parliament's business committee, said: "This near half-a-billion-pound investment using taxpayers' money seems to have been purely a commercial decision by Downing Street without any assessment of value for taxpayers' money or agreement from experts about the technical capability that OneWeb offers the UK now that we've lost access to European Union satellites.
Tories fail so hard there should be a special word just for them.
JaneEJuanita Did it really? Or would we find that 90% of it went into ERG & think tank coffers, like an over priced plane paint job, a non existent test & trace system and a horse-racing sponsor providing ‘capacity’ of 200k believed-faulty Covid tests?
chunkymark I wonder what % of this will find its way into Tory party coffers as donations ? 🤔
chunkymark The country is being run by kleptocratic shysters and Labour turns in its own supporters!
hugh_canning Talk about 'spaffing money up a wall' in Johnson's crude and vulgar phrase! This govt has been hurling money at every con artist and snake-oil salesman who turns up with their hands open and telling some tall story!
chunkymark So, whose family owns the company?
chunkymark Cui bono, Borisconi? 😬
PhilipCJames That would pay a few nurses wages
Classic Dom.
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Classic Dom ! Good to see Chris Grayling isn't involved this time. This is what an 80 seat majority brings
Can we at least name it Saty Mac Satellite Face
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