the bbc�*s star football presenter, gary lineker, has been suspended over comments he made criticising the british government's asylum policy. ina in a tweet he compared the language of the uk government with germany in the 1930s. britain will pay france hundreds of millions of dollars over the next three years for a new detention centre and more patrols to help clamp down on migrants crossing the channel in small boats. saudi arabia and iran have agreed to re—establish diplomatic ties seven years after riyadh�*s embassy in tehran was attacked following the saudi execution of a shia cleric. the gunman opens fire at a jehovah witness hall and the german city of hamburg. seven people killed including an unborn baby.

at ten o'clock we'll be here with a full round up of the days news. first. . .the chef, the model & the missing millions(vt) a global pandemic and a national emergency. from this evening, i must give the british people a very simple instruction. you must stay at home. an economy grinding to a halt. companies on the brink. well, today we announced a brand new loan scheme for the smaller businesses. rishi sunak, then chancellor to the rescue. rishi actually stood up and said, this is the bounce back loan scheme. there'll be no credit checks. it was like jackpot for a lot of people. a godsend for business. a gold mine for criminals. £100,000 on holidays, eating in the best restaurants, the flashiest, fastest cars, yachts, everything that most people

would desire in their lives when they win the lottery. these people, they won the lottery in an entirely different way. it was a colossal sum of money gone to some very, very bad people. - this is the inside story of fraud on a massive scale of gangs and glamour. i dug about in companies house. you see that? it's £10 million. we�* re really close. we just want to ask you where the money went. this is the chef, the model and the missing millions. the story starts here with two men, artem terzyan and deivis grochiatskij, one russian and one lithuanian.

tell us a bit about artem terzyan. russian. previous bad character. came here was really the controller of what was going on in relation to this group, a bad man. deivis? lithuanian, previous convictions in lithuania, again, afamily man. came to this country, was the mastermind around everything that went on and made a lot of money. this isjohn coles from the national crime agency. a copperfor decades, he knows a thing or two about fraud. i've never seen anything like it. so it is the biggest one i know of. it's the biggest one i've seen and it's probably going to be biggest one we will see

for a long time. terzyan and grochiatskij were money launderers caught on police surveillance videos they had bags stuffed with cash. and this is them delivering a safe. bundles and bundles of notes. ledgers and counting machines. they took dirty money from other gangs and put it through a whole load of fake companies — cleaning it, making it look legitimate. here they are, depositing cash at the bank, something they did almost every day. the prime minister announces the toughest restrictions on our way of life in living memory. you must stay at home. what was bad for the legitimate economy was also bad for criminals. the supply of dirty cash virtually dried up. so what do you do if you have a whole network of dodgy companies but with no

money to launder? the bounce back loan scheme is designed to support uk smaller businesses that have been adversely affected by the coronavirus outbreak. well, as luck would have it, the government had just set up an emergency loan scheme. £50,000 on offer, almost no questions asked. from £2000 to £50000. well, see, they're criminals, so they take advantage of anything that's readily available. and fortunately for them, unfortunately for the united kingdom, covid came along. the government tried to do the best it could for businesses, for people to support them during that difficult period. and these people took advantage of it and made £10 million worth through £50,000 applications at a time. yep, you heard that right. £10 million. and as soon as the bounce back loans hit their bank accounts here in london, they were gone. sent around the world to the united arab emirates,

to the usa, to hungary, to malaysia. but terzyan and grochiatskij got careless. they and some of the rest of the gang are now behind bars. here's deivis being interviewed by the national crime agency. so you were arrested this morning on suspicion of being involved in bounce back loan fraud. £10 million of criminal funds and assets are delayed. i don't know who is doing this. when officers from the national crime agency went through the doors of flats seven and eight here, they found bundles of cash, high—end watches, a string of bank cards and evidence of holidays in the caribbean and reservations at some of london's top restaurants. and that leaves some important questions. where did the money go? who else was involved?

and can they tell us where it went? it seems the gang made the docklands area of east london their home. they owned properties here, here, here and here, right next to city airport. so this is where we start looking. the gang lived well and liked to show it on social media. here's deivis�*s wife posing for the camera. we matched the view of the ship with the actual ship and — bingo. renata grochiatskij is the wife of one of the ringleaders of the scheme. she got a two year suspended sentence for her part in it. she's living just over there. do you think she knows where the money is?

i try to persuade her to do an interview with us. well, look, thank you for talking to me. she said she was scared to talk to us, didn't want to talk to us, didn't feel she could talk to us. said maybe we should talk to her solicitor also suggested we might come back with a translator, but at the moment she's not able to tell us anything useful. so what next? what is it they say? follow the money. remember that network of companies the gang used? each one needed a real person to act as a director. so how much did they know about what their business was being used for? they do have some responsibility. they probably turned a blind eye to what was going on, but i've no doubt they knew what was going on. why do you think that? if somebody comes to me with something that seems too good to be true, then in the back of my mind, i'm going to be thinking there's something not quite right about this.

say hello to yekaterina kobrina. yekaterina was the director of one of the key companies involved in the scheme. her name was on all sorts of documents. we don't know whether she ever lived in london, but looking through her facebook profile, we know she came here and that's just about 200 metres from where the gang was living. she looks like any other tourist smiling for the camera. but was she doing something more thanjust sightseeing? and this is povilas bartkevicius, a chef by trade and director of one of the main companies involved. we know that povilas was in london, too, standing on this exact spot, posing in front of that super yacht hotel.

we really want to talk to them. they're not in london any more, but both have common links to a city more than 1,000 miles away. lithuania, home to several million people, but we're only looking for two — povilas and yekaterina. theyjust might be able to tell us what happened to that £10 million. first, though, let me introduce you to a couple of people. these two are local investigative journalists. they've agreed to help out.

and as we're about to find out, they're really good. these are the people we're interested in. so we're starting with just two names and they're not in the phone book. this is yekaterina. so what do we know about yekaterina kobrina? yes. so it's yekaterina kobrina. so it's definitely her. yeah. there's the obvious. she's a model. and look, we found an online clothes outlet she works for. hello? we try to book her for a photo shoot. but the woman on the phone is suspicious. he's found something. a facebook post. so this is like a shopping street or talking about a shop. she's saying that.

that last week she bought potatoes and it was in very bad conditions in the shops. and today she bought tomatoes. 0k, translate. so you can write, last week we received rotten tomatoes, which looked tragic. so this is vilnius, this street where. so that is where the potatoes were bought? yes. well, we need to go there, don't we? continue on for two km. £10 million of british taxpayers money in this neighbourhood seems hard to believe. that's the shop, the supermarket where yekaterina is buying her potato. so she was doing that, well, a couple of times over a couple of weeks. i mean, that must mean she lives here or close by. we must be close, but no luck.

dead end — for now. so what are our chances of ever finding that money? criminals do not have borders. they don't care. this man runs a lithuanian anti—money laundering organisation in the uk. during covid, the government set up the schemes to help out businesses. they were handing out £50,000 with almost no checks at all. what do you think of that? uh... i would say it's a mistake. criminals are the first in the line who are trying to use new products, who are trying to use new services and etc. so, it's a mistake.

with the economy imploding and businesses going to the wall at the height of covid, handing out loans as fast as possible seemed like the only option. well, right at the start i thought, well, all you need for a bounce back loan is an eligible company and a pulse. but, you know, it turns out you didn't need either. we've come to blackpool to meet mike, who tried to help legit company owners get their hands on a bounce back loan. the people who scam the system. they should be rounding them up. they should be looking for them, hunting them, from that tax, you know, taxpayers money. mike craig ran a one man campaign

lifting the lid on all that he says was wrong with the scheme. how big a scandal is this? it's massive. we're talking billions of pounds. and when you hear that, people could just press a couple of buttons, £50,000, ship it off abroad and leave — that's wrong. it'sjust wrong. for people who are the criminal element, there was no risk at all because they were... if they had the bank accounts in place, they were they could get the money the next day. however, a lot of people, genuine businesses, didn't have an accounts with the first initial few lenders, so some of them were waiting 6—12 months even longer before they actually secured a bounce back loans. and they were the genuine ones and they missed out on getting the money, which was what the scheme was set up for. yet the criminals that got the money on day one, day two, day three and off this wrong. where does that leave the taxpayer?

stuffed for billions of pounds. back in vilnius, we switched targets. remember this guy, povilas? well, here's the thing. he was director of one of the gangs, dodgy companies. from social media, we know he's a chef and a pretty good one at that. he won awards at the restaurant where he used to work. but we also know the company in his name received loads of that bounce back loan money. £10 million came in and yup, you guessed it,

£10 million went out, transferred abroad — rishi's millions gone through the bank account of a company whose director was povilas's. we call the restaurant, but he doesn't work there any more. 0k. feels like yet another dead end. time to get creative. most people probably won't know what it is, but if you're a cyclist or a runner, you will. and that's the app strava. see, strava records all of the journeys you make, whether you're running or cycling. and i wondered whether povilas might be, for example, a cyclist. so i put his name into strava and sure enough, up it came. and it turns out he's been making journeys first thing in the morning and last thing at night. and look where it takes us

to another restaurant on the other side of town. he peddled here again and again. just over there. nice litlle restaurant, smoke coming out of the chimneys. we know that povilas sometimes works there, so we'rejust going to go in, have a meal, and see if he's on shift today. wow. the menu is eye watering. it's so expensive. the only thing we could afford was the soup. we just don't know whether povilas is here, working in the kitchen. we can't see him in the kitchen.

so we follow his strava route back the other way. too cold for a bike this time. looking at facebook, he's posted in a group for people who own bmws. and here's his car and the rear light apparently isn't working our man is on the case. and miraculously, there it is. it's the right mate. it's bmw. it's an e90. this is the car. yeah. so there's that one there, isn't it? we�* re really close. we must be very close here. he's living in this building or in this building. i mean, he could be watching us now. this man we're talking of he works as a chef here. he doesn't have lots of money. his brother is in prison.

he was the big guy. do you think there's any chance he might tell us where the money went? early the next morning — a surprise. hi, povilas. i'm angus from the bbc. we just want to ask you where the money when the money went. what money? from the bounceback loans. i don't know. your name is on a company bought solution. yes. and that received £10 million in your name? yeah. your name? the police in britain say the directors of these companies, they must have known or they should have known. what do you say to them? i don't know anything.

if i had some money or 10,000k. i didn't work two jobs here. ijust married two months ago. i worked weekends to buy everything. for my wedding. povilas tells us he has no idea his name was being used in this way. i really don't know what to make of that. he seems very genuine. he seems very honest. i don't think he was lying to us. but as far as he's concerned, that is the first time he's ever heard that his name is connected to the theft of £10 million now he's off to work. he does twojobs he says he lives in this set of flats. those on the edge of this scheme may or may not have known what was going on. but the fact is, the british taxpayer got well and truly ripped off. but why? why wasn't the gang stopped? why was the scheme so flawed?

politicians? police? who's to blame? well, london is the only place to find those answers. this storyjust gets more and more extraordinary. it turns out that when the gang were doing the bounce back loan fraud in 2020, they were already out on police bailfor the money laundering they'd been arrested for. that in 2018, the courts decided they couldn't keep them in prison. yes, it is frustrating. it's frustrating for hardworking officers that the individuals that they think are probably detained for a long time are back out there doing things. but that's the way things happen. and, you know, ourjob is to get out there and arrest them. how the rest of the criminaljustice system works is down to the rest of the criminaljustice system. but a difficult moment. yeah, difficult. difficult for people who work hard like my officers do. it sends a dreadful signal to society that bad people

are enriching themselves on the back of decent taxpayers. if anyone�*s going to know what went wrong with the bounce back loan scheme, it's this man. lord agnew was the government's counterfraud minister. he resigned in sheerfrustration. i think there was a colossal naivety. the mood in the treasury was that they were desperate to get the money out as quickly as possible. what they didn't understand was that a fraud and a credit check could takes minutes. it would not have delayed the money going out. well, it wasjust maddeningly frustrating because he was these were these were own goals that could easily have been stopped. but because the events were moving so quickly, by the time we were able to tighten things up now, the horse had bolted. i'm worried that that there is still a reluctance to grip this with real vigour. so as we stand. do we think that those at the top of government have learnt the lessons

of the banks backed loan scheme? i would like to hope so, but i'm not convinced. so what about yekaterina? she's out there somewhere. maybe she knows more about where the money went. we spend days trying to track her down. and then just as we're about to give up... nice to meet you. yeah. nice to meet you. i ask her about the company in her name, but i don't know anything and you should ask other people because i live in vilnius, lithuania. but you've lived in

london too, haven't you? but i don't give comments. no comments. only with my lawyer. and with that, she's gone. we've been chasing around vilnius for the last couple of days, trying to find yekaterina, and then suddenly we just saw her walking down the street. we nearly missed her, actually. she says she does know povilas and deivis, but really only because she was at school with them. and as for the companies which have got her name on, she says she has no idea about them. so where does that leave us? we found two people whose names

are on the companies which were used for the money laundering and the bounce back loan fraud. but we just don't know if they had any idea where the money came from and where it went to and ask for that money. to and as for that money — are we going to find it? is the british taxpayer going to get it back? it looks highly unlikely. there's still plenty of lying snow across northern ireland, north wales and northern england in particular. but there has been a lot of sunshine around today and of course, blue sky by day, mean clear skies at night. it will feel bitterly cold tonight and there'll also be some icy stretches. and there are met office weather

warnings in force for ice from the midlands northwards. so tonight, maybe some snow showers into aberdeenshire. there's an approaching weather front into parts of devon and cornwall, so a little milder here. but elsewhere, a sharp and a widespread frost where we have the lying snow. temperatures could dip as low as —10 to —12 degrees celsius. and it could be the coldest night in england so far this year. now, a weather front towards the south—west could give us a little bit of hill snow perhaps over the moors. there'll be some hill snow for wales, possibly even some to lower levels for a time over the higher ground of northern ireland. also some snow approaching the north—west of england. by the end of the day, brighter skies for a time. further east, maybe one or two snow showers for the central belt.

tonight at ten... turmoil at the bbc — as gary lineker is forced to step back from match of the day over tweets about the government's asylum policy. ian wright and alan shearer have walked out of tomorrow's programme in protest. in the last hour the bbc said the show will "focus on match action without studio presentation or punditry". gary lineker was told he cannot return until there is a clear and agreed position on his use of social media. the bbc�*s director—general defended his decision. as editor in chief of the bbc, i think one of our founding principles is impartiality — and that's what we're delivering on. but there are questions tonight about the corporation's enforcement of its rules on impartiality — with its chairman under investigation over previous links with borisjohnson.

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