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EXCLUSIVE:
Over half a billion pounds of UK Covid-19 testing contracts awarded to multinational accused of supplying goods to China that assist ‘genomic surveillance’. THREAD:
Over half a billion pounds of UK Covid-19 testing contracts awarded to multinational accused of supplying goods to China that assist ‘genomic surveillance’. THREAD:
US-based life science company Thermo Fisher Scientific owns several subsidiaries which have won 20 UK Coronavirus-related contracts since March 2020, totalling some £550 million.
These include a £331 million award to Life Technologies for Covid-19 testing equipment, the biggest Coronavirus contract we have found awarded to a single firm to date.
https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/b01d57f7-14a9-49ea-9a44-5fdce97dc282?origin=SearchResults&p=1
https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/b01d57f7-14a9-49ea-9a44-5fdce97dc282?origin=SearchResults&p=1
Further contracts were also issued to Thermo Fisher-owned Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Ltd; FEI UK Ltd; Qiagen Limited; and Fisher Scientific UK.
£553 million to a global consortium of companies with revenues of $25bn+, but how much due diligence went into this? ThermoFisher is linked to equipment sales that in the past possibly helped the Chinese state conduct ‘genomic surveillance’ on minorities https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-uighur-dna-thermo-fisher.html
Human Rights Watch and New York Times reported Chinese state officials forcing persecuted minorities like the Uighurs to get biometric tests, potentially using Thermo Fisher equipment to take DNA data to create biobanks for their security services. https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/22/thermo-fishers-necessary-insufficient-step-china
Thermo Fisher says it stopped selling equipment in Xinjiang province, where the Chinese government has been accused of keeping a million ethnic minority Uighurs in detention camps, in early 2019 after it came to realise what might be done with its tests. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/china-has-built-380-internment-camps-in-xinjiang-study-finds
But Thermo Fisher continues to trade in China. Meanwhile the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a govt think tank, says China’s ‘genetic surveillance’ programme is now used throughout the country. https://www.aspi.org.au/report/genomic-surveillance
ASPI says numerous biotechnology companies, including TFS, continue to work with Chinese police who are building ‘the world’s largest police-run DNA database’ and comments that they could find themselves complicit in any human rights abuses stemming from the use of the database’
Thermo Fisher’s contracts weren’t won illegally, and there is no indication of wrongdoing, but should the government be awarding large contracts for UK Covid-19 testing to companies with lingering questions about provision of equipment which could be used in human rights abuses?
Owing to government opacity over Covid testing data privacy, there are questions about whether data obtained via PCR testing awarded to any company could be used for other forms of monitoring or data commodification.
We contacted Thermo Fisher for a reply to our concerns, but no answer was given.
Did this concern you? Are you willing to help @allthecitizens reveal more concerning Covid-19 contracts lacking in due diligence and oversight? If so, please see the thread below to find out how you can help contribute and hold those in power to account: https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1319601008457154565?s=20
