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An investment company that won a £255mn contract for protective equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic is being investigated by HM Revenue & Customs over possible under payment of tax.
Tim Horlick’s Ayanda Capital is being investigated by the UK tax authority to determine whether it paid the taxes due on income it received during the pandemic, according to people familiar with the situation.
Ayanda said it was “fully co-operating with HMRC’s enquiries, that are legally confidential, and has no further comment to make”. HMRC declined to confirm or deny any investigation, which was first reported by the Sunday Times.
Ayanda was one of the companies caught up in scrutiny after the then Conservative government awarded large sums of taxpayer money to several companies that had no previous record in supplying PPE.
The company, which had previously specialised in private equity and currency trading, was one of several firms referred to the government for PPE contracts through a so-called “VIP procurement lane”.
One of its “senior board advisers” was Andrew Mills, who when the contract was awarded, was an unpaid adviser to the government’s Board of Trade, chaired at the time by the international trade secretary Liz Truss.
Around 50mn face masks the UK bought from Ayanda could not be used because they failed to meet basic safety requirements. Other masks provided by Ayanda did meet the test.
The High Court ruled in 2022 that the UK government acted unlawfully in operating the special VIP lane for potential suppliers of PPE who had links with politicians or government officials. The case had been brought by the Good Law Project campaign group.
However the judge concluded that even if companies including Ayanda had not been allocated to the VIP lane, “they would have been treated as priority offers” because of the substantial volumes of PPE they could deliver.
Ayanda added that its “contract with the Department of Health and Social Care has already been exhaustively investigated in the procurement case brought on by the Good Law Project against the government.”
It added: “The judicial review rejected all the Good Law Project’s claims in respect of Ayanda.”
HMRC said: “It is our duty to ensure everyone pays the right tax under the law. We have a wide range of civil and criminal powers to tackle allegations of tax fraud, including the use of powerful civil penalties and criminal prosecutions.”
Separately, the UK government is seeking to recover £148mn that a judge has ordered another medical supplier, PPE Medpro, to repay after finding that it provided substandard equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
PPE Medpro is now in administration. A recent administrator’s report said it had less than £1mn in assets, and also owed £39mn in taxes.
The company, linked to ex-Conservative peer Baroness Michelle Mone, supplied gowns for NHS use which failed to meet required sterility standards.
