“I’ve only just graduated from university, right? I didn’t expect my first job to be having to fight a court case with a CEO.”
Zayn (name changed), a former employee of Media Stream AI

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I’m Katie, one of TBIJ’s deputy editors. Franz is still away from the office, but not to worry he’ll be back next week.

Meanwhile, we’ve been busy doing what we do best: exposing rogue bosses, fraudulent businesses and dodgy investments.

This week we wrote about Jason Wells, an Australian businessman who owned a chain of trendy restaurants and pocketed hundreds of thousands of pounds, but repeatedly failed to pay his employees.

There’s something especially galling about a boss who doesn’t just bend the rules, but treats the law and people’s livelihoods like a joke. Between 2021 and 2025 the company that ran Wells’ Antipodea restaurant chain lost 21 employment tribunal claims. He hasn’t paid up for a single one, and there have been zero consequences. Workers who rightly demanded their wages were told “take me to court” and, when they did, it didn’t matter.

The human cost was immense. One person who worked as a duty manager at one of his restaurants ended up homeless after her missing wages never arrived. Others describe months of underpayment, threats and intimidation.

Wells seems to have also been a bully with anger issues. One worker who had to take time off due to stress said Wells called him up and told him he would not pay his sick leave until he returned to work. “He threatened me with firing,” said the worker, “he threatened me with ruining my name and I never went back.”

It’s infuriating that a boss can laugh in employees’ faces, take their money and still walk away. But Wells isn’t a one-off rogue operator. The hospitality industry – already notorious for low pay and precarious work – is the “wild west” of workers’ rights, rife with wage theft. 

We previously revealed how more than 5000 workers across the UK who have won claims or reached settlements at tribunal have never been paid. The system to enforce these awards is completely toothless. And bosses who know how to game the system – through complicated corporate structures, insolvencies and legal loopholes – keep getting away with it.

Bryan Simpson, the hospitality lead for the Unite union, told us: “It’s the lowest paid, the most precarious, the most racism, the most sexual harassment of any sector by a country mile.”

There’s more to this story – until there are real consequences for bosses who cheat their workers, we’ll keep applying pressure by exposing them. By becoming a member of the Bureau, you can help ensure we have the resources we need to do this important work. You can sign up from just £5 a month today:

Last year Chris Kenna, the founder of Media Stream AI (MSAI) launched his Salford data centre – a state-of-the-art £50m AI powerhouse cooled with water from the Rochdale Canal and using the heat from its Nvidia chips to warm vertical farms. It’s meant to be part of a series of data centres he’s set up across the country, powering MSAI’s “sovereign” AI strategy. It would be impressive – if it existed.

Our partners at the Manchester Mill went looking for the Salford data centre in Anchorage Place and found reality didn’t quite match up to Kenna’s claims. It was an empty one-storey building in front of an office block, and the receptionist in the office had never heard of MSAI. We’ve seen no evidence of any data centres in other locations either.

When we spoke to Kenna, he told us that he had signed three contracts worth $1.4bn for access to graphics processing units (GPUs) – key bits of hardware for AI – he’d purchased from Lenovo. Lenovo denied selling any GPUs to MSAI.

He also told us he had personally and single-handedly built a large language model, called Mother, despite having no formal training in computer science. When we found quotes on MSAI’s website claiming that the company had donated food from those vertical farms – which don’t exist – to a local foodbank, he blamed that on a different AI used to code the site: Claude.

MSAI also claims it has developed a scheme to cool Nvidia chips – which generate significant heat to power AI workloads – with recycled water from the nearby Rochdale Canal. The reality? The Canal and River Trust said it had not given anyone permission to use the water that way.

There are other sticky points in Kenna’s story – including his account of his military service.

Despite Kenna’s grandiose claims, he has managed to attract big names. At the launch in Manchester, two Lenovo managers and an investment director at Rathbones gave speeches, while Afzal Khan, the MP for Manchester Rusholme, posed for pictures with Kenna on KPMG’s roof terrace

The whole thing has a slightly surreal, “fake it till you make it” energy – except the “make it” part never arrives.

Engineers that have worked for MSAI say they’ve gone unpaid for months, while contractors who worked for Kenna’s other companies claim they’re owed tens of thousands of pounds. One MSAI employee told us about chasing wages that kept being promised “in three to five working days”, prompting him to wonder if the money might arrive by carrier pigeon. For all the talk of futuristic infrastructure, the basics – like paying staff – seem to be missing from the business model.

Kenna recently told a podcast: “I don’t think I’ve done anything bad bad … there’s no old school stuff, no harassment … I don’t slap people on their arses, that’s not the businesses I’ve run.”

Sure. But that’s not what we asked, is it?

Each week we reveal a fascinating fact from our reporting…

During a public debate, a Reform councillor outright called global warming a “hoax”.

In Nottinghamshire, councillor Bert Bingham said: “I’ve been involved in sustainability projects for 25 years and I’ve never seen such nonsense as the anthropogenic global warming hoax.”

He’s not the only Reform councillor to push climate denial into the mainstream. Across the UK, more than 300 councils have declared a “climate emergency” and many of those are backed up with ambitious net zero targets – but the position of councils led by Reform contrast sharply.

Watch our video on this here

Most of us would expect some basic due diligence around how our taxes are being spent. But our latest investigation has uncovered millions of pounds of UK taxpayers’ money funding healthcare companies linked to serious scandals that put patients at risk and line corporate pockets. And all of it was meant to help the world’s poorest.

BII, the UK government’s development finance arm, is tasked with investing public money to support vulnerable communities worldwide. It has received more than £5bn in the past decade and reported reaching more than 13 million patients in 2024.

However, our findings suggest that some of these funds have gone to some questionable companies. They include an Indian pharma company that produced contaminated cancer drugs and a healthcare platform mired in allegations of fraud.

This isn’t the first time we’ve uncovered dubious investments by BII. Last year, we uncovered how it was channelling UK climate aid to fossil fuel businesses.

With billions in public funds at stake – and the UK aid budget under pressure – we need to be asking questions about whether BII is truly delivering on its mission to support those most in need. As the former health lead at Oxfam said: “It raises serious questions about whether BII is failing to find the red flags or just choosing not to look.”