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Daily Record
7 days ago
- Daily Record
NHS kept using firm behind £6m corruption scandal for three years
Directors Adam Sharoudi, 41, and Gavin Brown, 48, secured major deals during a 'corrupt relationship' with NHS telecoms bosses Alan Hush, 68, and Gavin Cox, 60. The firm at the centre of a £6million NHS corruption scandal was still carrying out work for one health board three years after it was first charged. Four men were jailed for a total of 29 years in June following a major investigation into the award of lucrative NHS contracts to Ayrshire-based telecommunications firm Oricom. The probe was first revealed by the Daily Record after an NHS counter-fraud team swooped on Oricom's offices in 2015. Directors Adam Sharoudi, 41, and Gavin Brown, 48, secured major deals during a 'corrupt relationship' with NHS telecoms bosses Alan Hush, 68, and Gavin Cox, 60. Now an investigation into the contracts has revealed NHS Lothian, whose former telecoms manager Hush was jailed for eight years, carried on using the services of the firm up until March last year – paying out almost £100,000 after prosecutors were passed a dossier of evidence by fraud investigators. Craig Marriott, director of finance at NHS Lothian, said: 'NHS Lothian did not enter into any new regulated contracts with Oricom Ltd pending the prosecution outcome. 'Limited transactions continued where there was no alternative and for maintenance of systems historically supplied by Oricom Ltd, which would have had to be removed, written off or replaced otherwise. 'To do this would have disrupted operational activities as well as incurring additional costs.' More than 100 purchase orders detailing work between 2013 and 2024 amount to more than £330,000. Dozens of orders, totalling almost £97,000, were paid after the procurator fiscal was handed a report on the case. And the final two of those orders were dated after seven individuals had appeared in court for the first time in November 2021. NHS Lanarkshire, whose former head of IT and infrastructure Cox was jailed for six years, confirmed it had paid Oricom £3.7million between 2012 and 2017, but terminated its second contract five years early. It said: 'An initial contract was awarded to Oricom in 2012 with a three-year term. In May 2015, a second contract was awarded to Oricom. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. 'This contract had an initial term of seven years, with options to extend for a further two years. Although it was intended to run until 2022, or potentially 2024 with extensions, the contract was terminated early on in April 2017.' NHS Lanarkshire said it was unable to comment on the contract termination as it is subject to ongoing legal proceedings. Just months after the contract was scrapped, NHS Counter Fraud Services confirmed it had passed a report to the fiscal concerning allegations dating between 2000 and 2014. And during a three-month trial earlier this year, prosecutors proved contracts to supply and maintain equipment broke rules on financial wrongdoing in the tendering process. The charges spanning between 2010 and 2015 included bribery, corruption, fraud, theft as well as others under the Proceeds of Crime Act. One stated Sharoudi and Brown did 'acquire, use and possess' £5,719,244 of 'criminal property' paid by NHS Lothian, NHS Grampian, NHS Lanarkshire, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde as well as NHS Ayrshire and Arran. Jailing the four men, Lord Arthurson said: 'The reach and character of the corruption and, in particular, the corrupt relationship engaged by all of you was on a grand scale.' NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde confirmed it had not awarded any contracts directly to Oricom Ltd but it provided services to the health board as a third party via the national IT contract managed by NHS National Services Scotland. The value was over £119,000 for a three-year term between 2015 and 2018, but the service was terminated in June 2017, weeks after NHS Lanarkshire ditched its contract. NHS Grampian and Ayrshire and Arran said it did not hold any direct contracts with the firm. Brown and Sharoudi were sacked as Oricom directors after their convictions. The Record has contacted the firm for comment.
Daily Mail
07-08-2025
- Daily Mail
JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: Of cannabis farms and criminal audacity... and what the shocking state of our high streets says about our society
Do you ever wonder what goes on behind the shuttered doors and boarded up windows of the commercial businesses which once thrived in our towns and cities? When everything worth anything is stripped out and no one comes to refit the place for the next venture because bricks and mortar shops are failing almost everywhere, the intuitive assumption is cockroaches and rats move in. We see weeds sprouting from the window ledges and roofs and growing into bushes. As the familiar stages of decay take hold, the commercial unit becomes an eyesore and we divert our gaze and our thoughts to the ones still trading, still cleaning the windows and passing a brush over the floors. A High Court case in Glasgow this week suggests that many of us - not least the police - should take a closer look at the buildings we prefer not to behold. Really? A prime town centre location unused for months or years by a single living soul because no one could think of a way to make it pay? How naïve of us. The Forum shopping centre in Irvine, Ayrshire, may have looked to all the world like a busted flush but of course trade continued there long after the doors closed. The wooden boards and metal grilles which blocked out daylight and prying eyes helped the commercial venture along. The bleak state of dereliction was the perfect cover, as it is for similar buildings the length and breadth of Scotland. This place had been repurposed as a cannabis farm, growing industrial quantities of the class B drug just a short walk from the town's high street. The plants grew over two floors and numbered 3,058 in total. All told, they were worth up to £1.8 million. It was operated by a trio of Albanians, two of whom had previously been ordered to be deported from the UK. It seems one never left while the other snuck back in. Their business hid in plain sight, as cannabis farms do. They are everywhere, as prevalent, perhaps, as our best known coffee chains or burger joints. They just don't hang a sign on the door. The defunct Poundstretcher in Kirkcaldy's High Street? A cannabis farm. The unit a few yards away where WH Smith used to trade? Another one. A former stationer in Dunfermline; a disused pub in Airdrie; a boarded up Indian restaurant in Bathgate, the mothballed Antonine Hotel in Falkirk; a one-time furniture shop in Glasgow's Strathbungo; another old Poundstretcher unit, this time in Greenock... all of them given over to illegal horticulture. When the late Queen embarked on her final journey through her beloved Royal Deeside her cortege passed within yards of at least one cannabis farm in the first 17 miles. This was the Huntly Arms Hotel in Aboyne - once a favourite stopping off point for Queen Victoria but, by 2022, a thriving drugs operation trading rent-free behind those convenient wooden window boards. How many Caffe Neros or Burger Kings line the route between Balmoral and Aboyne? That'll be none. The farms I mention are, of course, the ones which have been raided and shut down. Do we suppose that's the bulk of them uncovered now or that the surface has barely been scratched? I'm going with the latter theory. It would also be my educated guess that for every farm shut down, several more spring up. That is because, in the modern drugs world, small is beautiful. The organised crime gangs profiting the most from these operations understand that vast cannabis farms are hostages to fortune - and they have lost fortunes when they have been uncovered. Far better to have multiple smaller crops in the hundreds of vacant commercial premises which litter our communities - and to staff them with expendable dogsbodies, often trafficked here or at least living in the country illegally. We do not know whether the three Albanians arrested at the Irvine cannabis farm were trafficked. They refused to answer questions on that. What can be said with certainty is this depressing case is a tale which tells us much about our country, none of it good. Our town centres are hollowing out and criminal enterprise is moving in. You may blame covid or online shopping or low emission zones or parking charges or commuter belt retail parks or economically illiterate politicians. Whoever you blame, witness the decay - see those wooden boards bringing down the curtain on legitimate business and shielding the crooks now lurking behind. Our police force is increasingly hollowed out too. While the cannabis farms all around hide in plain sight, their customers make no effort to hide at all any more. The putrid reek of the drug is ubiquitous on our streets because it is smoked openly by users who know perfectly well the force has no appetite for engaging with them. While it is certainly to their credit that three criminals are now facing jail, let's not forget they came to police attention only because ScottishPower tipped them off that an empty building seemed to be using an awful lot of electricity. You may wonder who pays for the energy which cannabis farms typically steal by tampering with the electricity supply or hijacking a neighbour's. Ultimately the cost is passed on to you and me in our bills. It is, I suppose, all the complacency in the face of all the cynicism that gets me the most - the blithe acceptance that is the kind of society we're stuck with. It is one where youngsters walk down the street openly taking controlled drugs and police officers walk past them, openly doing damn all about it. Where do they get their supplies? From dealers who get it from bigger dealers who get it from the cannabis farm in your high street that you remember as a bookstore back in the day. And who is minding the farm? Modern slaves, trafficked foreign nationals, failed asylum seekers... you name it. Anybody who doesn't matter very much to the gangs running the show. Anyone who can be intimidated into silence. How can this be happening in a former WH Smith? Because we have no meaningful control of our borders. We are importing criminals and willing doers of their dirty work. I don't pretend to know whether Elton Skenderi, 30, Gjovalin Toma, 31, and Eduard Daja, 3,9 were kingpins or lackeys. But the words of Judge Lord Mulholland, who heard their case this week, bear repeating. 'You have all come here to receive the benefits available from living here and this is how you treat the country - criminality on an industrial scale.' I do wonder, though, whether we let them do it. If cannabis farms are operating under our noses in commercial zones across Scotland one must suspect a certain inattention - or indifference - on the part of all of us. The drug remains illegal in this country. It seems to me a crackdown on the brazen partakers of it in public places would be a timely reminder of this.. Call it a start at least. Criminal audacity rarely grows on its own. Society's complacency is its fertiliser.
Daily Record
07-08-2025
- Daily Record
Ayrshire eateries dominate shortlists for the Food Awards Scotland 2025
It's another impressive showing from Ayrshire as a host of businesses have been shortlisted by the event organisers. Businesses the length and breadth of Ayrshire have been shortlisted across various categories in the 11th Food Awards Scotland 2025. For the last decade these awards have been an annual celebration of Scotland's top culinary hotspots. And once again, a host of Ayrshire eateries are in with a chance of landing top prizes. Zain's Curry House (Dalry) and Viking cafe takeaway (Saltcoats) are both shortlisted in the Takeaway of the Year category. The Balgarth Pines Bar & Restaurant (Ayr) and The Dumfries Arms Hotel (Cumnock) will fight it out with nine others for the main prize in the Hotel Restaurant of the Year category. And the The Principal Cafe (Galston) and The Fish Works (Largs) are Ayrshire's two representative in the Best Fish N' Chips Establishment. Kilmarnock-based Artisan Weddings have been shortlisted in the Caterer of the Year category, while Ayr's Vegan Earth is on the Best Vegetarian / Vegan Establishment shortlist. And the Glasshouse Restaurant (Kilmarnock) has been shortlisted for the chance to win the Fine Dining Restaurant of the Year accolade. In terms of the Dessert Outlet of the Year, Nanny Marys (Ayr) is in the running, while Home Cook School (Kirkoswald) has been nominated in the Cookery School of the Year category. And Mr Basrai's World Cuisine (Ayr) has been included in the Buffet Restaurant of the Year category. Another Ayr business, The Drunken Coo, has made the Burger Bar of the Year shortlist, as well as Oceans 11 (Kilmarnock). In the Best Bistro/Diner category, Arranview Cafe Bistro (Galston) is on the shortlist, while Tattie Shack Farm Shop (Monkton), Nanny Marys (Ayr), and Puffers Café (Irvine) made the Deli of the Year shortlist. And Scotts Bar & Restaurant (Largs) has made the Bar & Grill of the Year category. These awards shine a spotlight on the dedication, talent, and entrepreneurial spirit of restaurant owners and teams across the country who work tirelessly to deliver exceptional service and experiences to their communities. Oceanic Awards finalists are selected in a few different ways. There is no fee and anyone can enter as long they fit the criteria of the awards including being operational for a minimum of 12 months. Nominations opened to the public via online platforms and social media, allowing customers and communities to put forward the establishments they love most. Voting will remain open until one week prior to the event. This prestigious final event will take place on Monday, August 25 at the Doubletree by Hilton Glasgow Central and will see top professionals come together to celebrate their achievements. Irfan Younis, spokesperson for The 11th Food Awards Scotland, said: 'We're honoured to once again spotlight the country's top food establishments and businesses. 'This year's finalists have all been distinguished as the real masters in their field due to their hard work and dedication to customer satisfaction. 'These finalists reflect the resilience and creativity of the entrepreneurs, employees and managers who always ensure the best possible experience for their customers. 'We would like to congratulate all of our finalists and wish them the best of luck.'
