Fraudster who breached low pay laws won government contract
7 min read·Mar 29, 2026
Asif Hamid, who went on the run after conning Children in Need, reinvented himself as an entrepreneur but has links to firms that went bust owing £6.2 million tax
A company run by a Labour council appointee once convicted of defrauding BBC Children in Need received almost £1 million in government contracts despite failing to pay staff the minimum wage, The Times can reveal.
Asif Hamid, who runs a call centre empire, was appointed by the Labour-run Liverpool city region in 2017, serving as the mayor Steve Rotheram’s business lead until 2023.
His firm, The Contact Company, secured lucrative central government work despite his criminal past and its breaches of minimum wage laws.
His company won nearly £800,000 in telecoms contracts from the Treasury and VisitBritain between 2022 and 2024 and a place on a multi-billion pound government-approved contractor agreement in 2021.
The revelation raises questions for the government as to how Hamid’s firm passed due diligence checks on suppliers.
Hamid went on the run in Pakistan in 1990 after being arrested for conning a hotel in Burnley and the charity BBC Children in Need out of £4,500 by misleading donors about fundraisers. In 1996 he handed himself in and was jailed for ten months at Burnley crown court.
He had convictions aged 19 for possessing an offensive weapon in a public place and, aged 20, for deception, after cashing a benefit cheque that he falsely claimed had never arrived.
Hamid has reinvented himself as an entrepreneur, building a network of call centre businesses on the Wirral, bolstered by public grants and contracts.
He sat on the local economic partnership (LEP) from 2010 and served as its chair between 2017 and 2023, and chaired the Wirral Chamber of Commerce.
Hamid, who was awarded an MBE and was photographed with David Cameron when hosting the prime minister on a visit to the region, described himself as a “leading entrepreneur” whose expertise was “highly sought by local and national commercial organisations, as well as by members of parliament”.
In October 2010, his firm bought a 29,500 sq ft office from receivers after the collapse of Felton, a building firm in Birkenhead, with a £250,000 Wirral council Think Big grant and a loan from NatWest.
In 2014, it was awarded £1 million by the LEP that Hamid, its founder and chief executive, sat on. The sum, which amounted to a quarter of all the money handed out in the Wirral area, was granted alongside an extra £40,800 for staff training.
The company, which already had a turnover of £10 million, used the money to move into a new 900-seat premises and take on new staff.
At the time, the LEP and Hamid denied any conflict of interest. Liverpool city region said: “At no point was the LEP board or its members, including Mr Hamid, involved in decision making as to appraisal of applications or awards of grant.”
In 2017 Liverpool city council faced a backlash when it approved a 45,000 sq ft waterfront call centre for Hamid’s company on prime land, without a public bidding process.
Rotheram defended the deal, praising The Contact Company as “one of the city region’s more recent success stories”. The plan, which a source said was drawn up at a turbulent time when the council had no permanent chief executive, was later scrapped.
A whistleblower claimed to have raised specific concerns about Hamid’s past with senior Labour Party figures in Merseyside, but these were ignored. “I was shocked,” the source said. “They just turned a blind eye.”
Hamid has no recent criminal convictions but three companies he was linked to have collapsed and owe millions to HMRC and Barclays Bank, according to filings.
TCCL Realisations Limited (formerly known as The Contact Company), The Contact Specialists and Tower Wharf Limited owe HMRC a combined £6.2 million, which liquidators say is unlikely to be recovered.
In 2024, Hamid sold The Contact Company in a pre-pack administration, a process which wipes out creditors but allows an otherwise profitable business to continue trading. He continues to work as its chief executive after the business was sold to a rival firm, Sensée.
Failed to pay minimum wage
Hamid’s business The Contact Company has been named and shamed by the Department for Business and Trade for failing to pay staff the minimum wage. A 2025 listing, relating to historical underpayments during Hamid’s tenure between 2016 and 2019 before the company was sold, revealed 111 workers were underpaid by a total of £2,800.
He also appears to have embellished his academic credentials, claiming on his LinkedIn profile to have completed an MBA at Harvard Business School between 2002 and 2004.
The Ivy League university told The Times they had no record of him studying for a degree. Harvard confirmed that Hamid completed a short executive leadership programme.
Hamid’s business and criminal past raises questions about why his companies continued to receive taxpayer cash.
Peter Smith, a procurement expert, questioned The Contact Company’s place on a £1.5 billion list of approved call centre suppliers despite owing millions in tax. “The fact that this company went bust would usually lead to the customer terminating the contract,” he said. Those familiar with the government’s procurement process claimed that compliance checks were carried out following the Sensée takeover.
The Cabinet Office said: “All of our agreements are awarded in line with procurement regulations and follow robust supplier assurance processes.”
LCR said that Hamid’s election as LEP chair was “an appointment which neither mayor Rotheram or the combined authority were involved in”, adding that he was given the LCR business portfolio by combined authority members collectively.
Liverpool city council said: “We have been on a transformational improvement journey since 2020, and since 2023 have had a new political and officer management team focused on delivering the best services and outcomes for residents.”
Hamid did not respond to a request for comment.
Links to Wirral Council leader Paula Basnett
Local newspapers the Liverpool Echo, the Wirral Globe and the Liverpool Post have been absolutely nowhere on this. As for The Times, they’ve only just caught up.
Pubic service journalism was being carried out elsewhere. Investigatory website Wirral Leaks exposed this fraudster repeatedly … A LONG TIME AGO …
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