Claims About Short-Seller Made in UK Parliament Trace Back to Private Intelligence Firm Hired by Steward Health Care

A private intelligence firm working for a disgraced U.S. healthcare operator fed what appears to be false information to a British politician, leading him to claim in parliament that a well-known businessman was a Russian agent, leaked communications show. 

The politician, Member of Parliament Liam Byrne, made the comments in March 2023, as Texas-based Steward Health Care and U.K.-based private intelligence firms were running a multi-million-dollar smear campaign against the healthcare company’s critics. 

One of their targets was Fraser Perring, the founder of Viceroy Research, a short-selling firm that investigates companies whose value it believes to be inflated and makes money by betting their share prices will drop. In early 2023, Viceroy had earned Steward’s ire by publishing two damning reports into the healthcare operator and its biggest shareholder, Medical Properties Trust (MPT). 

Not long after that, Byrne stood up in parliament and suggested Viceroy was working with the Kremlin to undermine British defense contractors. He also claimed that Perring took frequent trips to Moscow. The comments, which Perring furiously denied, led to a flurry of coverage in U.K. media before the story died down. 

But now, leaked communications obtained by OCCRP suggest Byrne’s comments were devised as part of a wider “false flag” campaign against Perring that the London-based private intelligence firm Audere International was engineering on Steward’s behalf. OCCRP reported in July that Audere had been targeting Perring with surveillance and disinformation, following the businessman with private spies and posting crude content about him on Twitter. 

Byrne, who has previously held ministerial posts in government and was recently reelected to parliament, did not respond to a request for comment. He has not publicly repeated the allegations against Perring, nor has he retracted them, but has denied accusations from Perring that he was paid to make the statement. OCCRP has not found evidence that he was.

However, leaked communications suggest that the parliamentarian's comments were fed to him by an intermediary — who did appear to receive payment from Audere for his role in the affair. 

The communications show that ex-MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele — the author of the controversial Trump-Russia dossier — engaged in discussions with Audere on March 2, 2023, about a written question Byrne should ask in parliament about Viceroy. 

Audere provided the text of a proposed question on Viceroy to Steele, who later confirmed he had sent the question to Byrne with minor changes. 

Members of parliament can submit written questions asking for information about the work of government departments, which are publicly recorded and answered. Byrne submitted a written question for the Treasury about the regulation of short-sellers two weeks before he made his oral comments in parliament. The written question was nearly identical to the one suggested by Audere, though it didn’t mention Viceroy directly. 

Bank transaction records show that Steele received 29,000 British pounds from Audere in April 2023. There is no indication Steele violated any laws. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Lawyers for Audere denied that the company or its executives had paid Byrne to ask a question in parliament, but did not respond to queries on whether Audere had written such a question or paid Steele to send it to Byrne. The lawyers said they could not respond to detailed questions from reporters due to client confidentiality.  

“Our client takes its legal and regulatory compliance obligations seriously and acts in accordance with the same,” they said. “Any suggestion to the contrary would be seriously defamatory of our client, as well as its senior leadership team.”

Paying More to Fund “Bull”

On March 1, 2023, a director at Audere, Monika Rihma, had an internal discussion about a plan for a person named “Liam” to raise an oral or written question in parliament about Perring and Russian short-selling attacks, leaked communications show.

The conversation described the plan to link Perring and Russia as part of “ongoing anti-Russia interference work” being carried out by Walsingham, a company that belongs to Steele, for which he would receive 30,000 pounds. 

Rihma said that she would be happy to pay more to expedite the Perring plan, on top of “funding whatever bull :D.”

Two days later, on March 3, 2023, Byrne tabled the written parliamentary question, asking the Treasury about which regulatory agencies were responsible for protecting “defense-critical processor manufacturers” from short-selling attacks by hostile foreign states and short-seller campaign groups.

On March 16, 2023, Byrne took the floor in parliament to raise the issue. He made a stronger statement on the floor than in his written question, specifically calling for a debate on the activities of Viceroy and Perring — although he twice mispronounced Perring's name, calling him "Pelling."

Byrne said he had been “told” that Viceroy was working with another short-seller, which he accused of launching a short-selling attack on British defense contractor Babcock International.

The member of parliament also alleged that Perring was “a not infrequent visitor to Moscow.” 

“We must ensure that short-selling groups are not another weapon in Putin’s arsenal. Where there are links between short-selling attack groups and the Kremlin, we need to know,” he said. 

The same day Byrne spoke in parliament, Audere’s founder, former British Army officer Charles Blackmore, wrote in an internal discussion that "the client" was happy.

He also asked for a video of Byrne’s comments to be sent to an executive at MPT, the real-estate investment trust that was Steward’s largest shareholder, according to communications obtained by OCCRP. 

Neither Blackmore nor Rihma responded to requests for comment.

Leaked internal communications show that Blackmore was also in contact with Steward’s general counsel, Herb Holtz, after Byrne made his comments, and kept him abreast of further developments in the story. (Holtz had also been Steward’s point of contact for Audere employees running the wider campaign against the hospital chain’s opponents, OCCRP found in its previous investigation.)

In internal discussions about sending evidence of Byrne’s statement in parliament, Blackmore said that “Herb” had asked him: “No way they’ll trace it right?” and that he had offered reassurance. 

Blackmore also reported receiving further praise from the “client” after forwarding them a private letter from the Leader of the House of Commons at the time, Penny Mordaunt, in which she flagged Byrne’s allegations to Britain’s security minister. Mordaunt had copied Liam Byrne on the letter. (Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat, the security minister at the time, did not respond to requests to comment). 

The client had praised the “great work” and would pass on Mordaunt's letter to “RDLT” — the initials of Steward’s CEO Ralph de la Torre — Blackmore said.

“Covered By Parliamentary Privilege”

Steward, which has since gone bankrupt, paid millions to Audere and other U.K.-based private intelligence firms for its campaigns against Perring and other critics, even as it fell behind on repairs and critical medical supplies at the hospitals it ran. 

But while the other smear attacks against Perring were disseminated on social media, the allegations made by Byrne took place at the heart of the British establishment and stood out for their special protection from prosecution. Statements made in Parliament are shielded from defamation suits, part of a package of protections for legislators known as parliamentary privilege.

Leaked communications seen by OCCRP show that Rihma was informed of a plan for “Liam” to name Perring specifically under cover of parliamentary privilege.

While parliamentary privilege exists to ensure parliamentarians’ ability to hold free and fair debates, and protect them from outside influence, it also creates an “on-the-record, public space which is entirely protected, and [where] anybody can say literally anything,” said Josie Stewart, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank. 

When he reached out to police, Perring was told that Byrne’s comments were covered by this immunity and that no crime had occurred.

Perring said some of his bank accounts had been frozen in the wake of Byrne’s parliamentary comments, while other banks had to rerun their compliance and background checks.

“I had to explain that I was not a Russian agent or spy,” he told OCCRP.  

“Unfortunately, the parliamentary authorities claim they can do nothing about it as Mr. Byrne’s slander is covered by parliamentary privilege,” he said. 

The March 2023 campaign against Perring kicked off just after Viceroy had released a bombshell report into Steward’s relationship with MPT, alleging Steward had fraudulently overvalued its Colombian assets in a sale to MPT.

Internal communications seen by OCCRP show that Steward was concerned about the activities of short-sellers driving down share prices. While Steward is a private company, the firm was worried about MPT, the publicly listed company that was its co-owner and sole landlord. 

MPT, which launched a defamation case in the U.S. against Perring’s company Viceroy at the end of March 2023, has denied any wrongdoing, and a spokesperson told OCCRP that MPT had nothing to do with Audere’s work for Steward. 

A previous OCCRP article revealed Audere’s work for Steward extended back to at least January 2018, although it didn’t begin to target Perring until early 2023. In July 2023, according to internal Audere communications, Blackmore described to his staff how “Herb” was demanding that Audere conduct more “offensive false flag” operations against Perring, even though the firm felt it had already done enough.

“He is so offensively false flagged that he’s fucked,” Blackmore said. 

Steward didn’t respond to questions about Audere or Byrne's question in parliament. In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson said only: “Mr. Holtz is an outside legal advisor to Steward Health Care Systems with no executive role. He has not been General Counsel since 2021.” (In testimony during Steward's bankruptcy proceedings in May 2024, Holtz described himself as general counsel, not outside counsel).