{"id":207062,"date":"2020-05-11T06:38:50","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T06:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=207062"},"modified":"2020-05-15T06:13:35","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T06:13:35","slug":"flashback-gates-foundation-trust-ups-stake-in-u-k-prison-firm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=207062","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Gates Foundation Trust Ups Stake in U.K. Prison Firm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allison Ingersol \u2013 Bloomberg News July 23, 2019<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"

Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

The\u00a0Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>increased its stake in one of the U.K.\u2019s largest for-profit prison operators.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trust, the Gates foundation\u2019s investment arm,\u00a0added nearly 200,000 shares<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Serco Group Plc<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0in May, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That took its holding to 3.74 million shares worth about 5.3 million pounds ($6.6 million), a tiny fraction of the foundation\u2019s\u00a0total assets<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0of about\u00a0$48 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Serco shares were added to the portfolio by an outside asset manager with discretion over individual investments, according to a spokesman for the trust, who said holdings are regularly evaluated for performance and fit. The foundation\u2019s staff have no influence over the trust\u2019s investment decisions, according to its\u00a0website<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Serco\u00a0runs six<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>for-profit prisons in the U.K., all of which are nearly filled to capacity. Britain holds a\u00a0bigger proportion<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0of inmates in for-profit prisons than any other country except Australia, and the market is dominated by three companies: Serco, G4S Plc and Sodexo SA. In January, Serco was handed a 1.9 billion-pound,\u00a010-year government contract<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0to provide support services for asylum seekers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company has had its run-ins with the government. A Serco unit earlier this month\u00a0agreed to pay<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a019.2 million pounds to settle a six-year probe into false accounting related to overcharging for electronic tagging of criminals. And that contract for asylum support services came after millions of pounds of\u00a0penalties<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0in recent years for missing contractual performance requirements.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Gates foundation acquired an initial stake of more than 600,000 Serco shares in 2014, shortly after\u00a0liquidating\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/span>its stake in G4S, the world\u2019s biggest security-services provider, which drew criticism for its contracts with Israel\u2019s prison system.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You have to wonder about the ethics of the man who is pushing for the development of a vaccine against coronavirus, when he also profits from prisons? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-The_Oligarchs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=207062"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207081,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207062\/revisions\/207081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=207062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=207062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=207062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}