Land Registry Faces Shaming Over £4.8m Amazon Web Contract

The bosses of the UK's Land Registry are accused of doing something that looks perhaps a little dodgy, after revealing a £4.8m deal with Amazon Web Services to host its work. The problem being that Amazon UK's boss is also a non-executive director of the Land Registry, implying, to the casual observer, that some shady lunch meetings may have been had to cook up a cosy deal. As if we ever thought otherwise.

It doesn't look good, even though it's unlikely that the in-demand executive in question, Doug Gurr, actually had much to do with the nuts & bolts mechanics of a corporate AWS deal. The Telegraph spoke to anti-corruption expert Robert Barrington, who said: "Public trust is really important here and anything that undermines public trust is a bad thing. Frankly it doesn't look good, and if it doesn't look good they should be doing something about it."

To which Amazon used the classic "fake news" defence and responded: "Doug Gurr has no involvement in any contract procurement decisions. To suggest he has a connection to any contract awards is untrue." [Techradar]