Published October 2021, three months before The Times and before the Profit or Prophet series. A company incorporated with a £2 share capital in March 2020 had been awarded £690 million in lateral flow test contracts. Sterilabs won £271 million — but opening the contract document revealed a second supplier: Sante Global LLP, formerly known as Unispace.
In October 2021, two — or more accurately three — companies connected to members of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church had been awarded lateral flow test contracts worth a combined £668 million. The headline figures were staggering enough. The detail was more so.
The Sterilabs contract — £271 million for lateral flow tests — does not readily appear when searching the UK Government Contract Finder by supplier name. It is only by opening the contract document itself that a second company appears as part of the supply arrangement: Sante Global LLP.
Medco Solutions was incorporated on 26 March 2020 — six days into the UK's first lockdown — with a share capital of £2. Its route to £690 million in lateral flow contracts was the distribution deal for ACON Flowflex, the lateral flow test brand that became one of the dominant UK government testing products.
Prior to starting Medco Solutions, Ross Robertson worked for Unispace Global — which had itself won approximately £670 million in PPE contracts via the VIP lane. His brother Luke Robertson was a director of Snaffle Solutions alongside Daniel Reiner — who is also a director of Bryson Products, another PBCC-connected PPE contract winner. The connections between Medco, Unispace and the wider PBCC network were not coincidental.
"A company with a £2 share capital, incorporated six days into the UK's first lockdown, had been awarded £690 million in government testing contracts within 19 months."
Brethren Exposed — October 2021Sante Trading Co. — the entity that grew out of Unispace's employee base post-sale — listed Ross Robertson as a shareholder at the time this investigation was published. An employee of Unispace had incorporated Medco Solutions three weeks after Sante Trading was first set up, and was a shareholder in both. The circularity of the network was already visible in October 2021.