A former Labour minister has been cleared by a judge of his role in a fraudulent Covid-19 testing centre.
Shahid Malik was found not guilty of three offences relating to RT Diagnostics in a trial conducted without a jury.
The 58-year-old, who became the MP for Dewsbury in 2005 and was a justice minister and communities minister before losing his seat in the 2010 election, was one of five people charged over the company, which prosecutors said was a “cash cow” set up to take advantage of the government’s expanding test and trace system in March 2021.
Earlier this year, following months of evidence at Bradford Crown Court, His Honour Judge Christopher Smith discharged the jury while it was deliberating following an allegation of jury tampering.
One juror was arrested.
Judge Smith took the decision to continue the trial without the jury, with him deciding on the verdicts.
On Thursday, he cleared Mr Malik of fraudulent trading, causing a public nuisance, and money laundering.
The court heard Mr Malik started the business with pharmacist and former Labour councillor Faisal Shoukat when the third national lockdown was ending in March 2021.
Shoukat, 39, of Savile Park, Halifax, was found guilty of all three offences.
Paul Moore, 57, of Colne Road, Burnley, who had a senior role in RT Diagnostics and was Mr Malik’s office manager when he was an MP, was cleared of causing a public nuisance and fraudulent trading.
Faisal Shoukat and Paul Moore (Image: Newsquest)
Lynn Connell, 65, of Waggon Farm, Ash Hall, Ripponden, a manager at the company, and registered scientist Dr Alexander Zarneh, 71, of Wood Lane, Hipperholme, Halifax, who was its clinical director, were also cleared of the same two offences.
Defence barrister Jonathan Laidlaw KC said that Mr Malik’s role in the business had been “very limited indeed” and that he had acted as “a facilitator – putting the money up and making introductions”.
Giving his closing speech to jurors in March, Mr Laidlaw said Mr Malik never went to the premises when it was in operation.
He told the court that for most of the time the business was operating, Mr Malik was out of the country and there was no evidence he was told about any of its issues while he was abroad.
Mr Laidlaw said the fact that the former MP had made money from RT Diagnostics “can’t possibly be the basis for a guilty verdict”.
The court heard that as the third national lockdown was ending in March 2021, the Government was looking to expand its test and trace system by increasing the number of laboratories offering PCR testing.
At the opening of the trial in October of last year prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford KC said RT Diagnostics was purported to be a laboratory and service that sent out sample kits to customers who then carried out PCR tests in their homes during the period of the government-funded NHS test and trace service.
The samples were then returned to RT Diagnostics.
But Mr Sandiford said the kits, which had been sourced in Turkey, were inadequate as they did not meet the standards required for testing in the UK.
The building purported to be used as the laboratory was described as “shoddy, inadequate premises with holes in the walls and ceilings” with rubbish and building debris “lying about” and “even homeless people living on the top floor.”
Young people who had “little or no training” in the handling of Covid-19 testing samples were employed and there was no social distancing involved and no PPE worn.
The court heard that between May and July 2021 RT Diagnostics reported 123,104 PCR test results to the government of which 123,058 were listed as negative.
Mr Sandiford described the business as “lucrative” and that in the three-week period from May 22 to June 6, 2021, it generated revenue of £6.674 million – an average of £318,000 a day – from its inadequate and legally non-compliant testing service.
The defendants were accused of “taking advantage” of that process with an “inadequate and non-compliant” testing company.
Mr Sandiford told the court: “Because of that, some of the test samples that were returned by consumers to the laboratory were not tested but simply dumped in a room on the premises,” he told jurors.
“People who complained enough got told their result was negative, when in fact their sample had not been tested.”
He said this meant people who ought to have been self-isolating were going out in public.
The trial started in October 2025, and jurors were sent out to start their deliberations in March.
In April, they were discharged after an allegation of jury tampering.
Judge Smith’s ruling that he could deliver verdicts himself was challenged by Shoukat, but last week three judges at the Court of Appeal refused him leave to appeal.
The judge also lifted reporting restrictions on the case.