Terrorists and Criminals Reportedly Got $37.5 Billion From COVID Relief and Other U.K. Aid Programs

From 2015 to 2021, more than 28 billion pounds (about $37.5 billion) was given to terrorists and hostile states by the British government, according to The Telegraph.

As the outlet reports, a secret government dossier shows more than 28 billion pounds of spending ended up in the hands of terrorist groups and other national security threats. Sources told The Telegraph that an organized crime network linked to Eastern Europe made a “concerted effort to obtain British public funds.”

The document includes details of COVID loans being sent to Islamic State group terrorists, grants given to companies linked to the Russian government, and research spending on companies associated with the Chinese military. The report also outlines instances of human traffickers claiming government benefits and COVID relief grants being channeled to the Islamic State in Syria.

Officials have reportedly known the scathing details of the dossier—which was commissioned by security officials in 2023 after reports emerged of widespread fraud in the government’s pandemic-era rescue packages—for years. The secret dossier “was never made public to save the government from the political embarrassment of revealing the huge scale of misdirected funds,” according to the sources who spoke to The Telegraph.

This isn’t the first report on government waste during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2025, the British government published a report to Parliament which found that 10.9 billion pounds (about $14.6 billion) of taxpayer money had been lost to “fraud and error” during the pandemic response. An estimated 324 million pounds ($434 million) of personal protective equipment spending was fraudulent. Meanwhile, the Bounce Back Loan Scheme issued 1.5 million loans worth 46.5 billion pounds ($62.3 billion), with an estimated 2.8 billion pounds ($3.75 billion) lost to fraud and error. That report found that “inadequate checks facilitated significant volumes of fraudulent applications,” and that loans were dished out to businesses, but “no checks were made.”

Officials knew of the risks associated with handing out such large sums of money from the start. That report said that they “lacked the necessary capabilities to effectively manage the fraud and error risks associated with a substantial loan portfolio,” and that they “recognised the high fraud risk.”

The secret dossier was compiled by analyzing government grants awarded between 2015 and 2021, a period in which even billions in misdirected funds represented only a fraction of the British state’s vast aid expenditure. During this period, Britain had one of the highest foreign aid budgets in the world, committing to 0.7 percent of gross national income toward foreign aid. Under the statutory target, foreign aid spending rose from 12.1 billion pounds (about $16.2 billion) in 2015 to 15.2 billion pounds (about $20.4 billion) in 2019, before falling to 11.4 billion pounds (about $15.3 billion) in 2021 after the government reduced the target to 0.5 percent of gross national income. Across the seven-year period, Britain spent roughly 95 billion pounds (about $127.4 billion) on foreign aid.

Indeed, wasteful spending under the guise of foreign aid is not a new phenomenon. As one report from the Institute of Economic Affairs, a British free market think tank, details, the government has spent foreign aid in regions that are wealthier than parts of Britain itself. The richest region that received foreign aid, Ordos in China, was richer than 69 regions in Britain. Projects funded include a temporary cycle lane in Mexico City and an all-female traditional Chinese opera in Shanghai.

However, The Telegraph‘s reporting reveals that the government has now well and truly outdone itself. The government does not just fund frivolous projects but also directly finances fraudsters, gangsters, terrorists, and hostile regimes. Looks like a government big enough to spend billions in the name of saving the world is also foolish enough to hand that money to some of the worst people in it.