Company in dispute with HSE over ventilator supplies posted a €1m profit in 2020
A Covid-19 patient has oxygen pumped into her body by a ventilator. The HSE has been in dispute with the Roqu group of companies after it sought to buy from them 328 units of the key medical equipment at the outset of the pandemic. Picture: Daniel Cole/AP
An Irish media management company which is in dispute with the HSE over the procurement of Covid ventilators from China made a profit of €1m after tax in 2020, its latest financial accounts reveal.
Roqu Media International Limited, an Irish company — primarily known prior to 2020 for festival management work in Eastern Europe and the Middle East — posted a €1.02m increase in its net assets as of the end of 2020, up to €3.1m, according to its most recently filed accounts.
Its parent company, Roqu Holdings, valued the group, which consists of six separate entities registered in Ireland, as being worth just over €6m at the same date.
One of those companies, Roqu Energy Group Limited, was newly registered in November of 2021.
Roqu Media declared an increase in cash and cash equivalents of €337,000 across 2020.
Some €397,000 of its posted profit relates to money owed to itself by its associated group of companies, the majority of which relates to sister company Roqu Group, which posted a loss of €378,000 for the year.
The company further lists €321,000 worth of motor vehicles as assets. In January 2021, it sold two luxury sports cars — a Maserati Gran Turismo and a Ferrari 488 Spyder — for an estimated €325,000 to a Dublin dealership.
Roqu has been in dispute with the HSE over the last 20 months regarding €10.3m which it was paid to procure ventilators from China in March of 2020, at the time of a global shortage of the life-saving machines.
The company was initially contracted to provide 328 machines at a cost of €35,000 apiece, for an overall prepayment of €14.1m.
However, just 65 ventilators were ever received, according to the HSE, and the devices subsequently failed to pass the quality standards required for clinical deployment. They have been in storage in Ireland ever since.
It has since emerged that a HSE due diligence document regarding the transaction noted several potential risks in terms of whether or not the machines to be delivered would be capable of passing quality control tests. The deal proceeded nevertheless as the HSE deemed the “clinical need outweighs the identified risks”.
Roqu subsequently refunded €3.8m to the HSE. Of the outstanding €10.3m, the supplier contends that over €6m was “spent on transport and logistics associated with the HSE orders including shipments of PPE, medical equipment, as well as the ventilators”, per a HSE internal audit of the transaction.
The HSE confirmed that the Roqu dispute resolution process remains “ongoing”, and that as such it is not in a position to comment.
Roqu’s chief executive, 42-year-old Westmeath native Robert Quirke who currently resides in Sliema, Malta, per the accounts, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr Quirke’s remuneration for 2020 per the accounts was €245,000.
The Roqu transaction is one of four such deals entered into by the HSE in March and April of 2020 to procure equipment from China which has since been referred to a dispute management process. The HSE has retained marquee Dublin legal firm Philip Lee as its representative in those disputes, two of which have since been resolved.
Notwithstanding the ventilators transaction, the only mention of Covid-19 within Roqu Media’s 2020 financial statement is a reference to the “temporary closure of its operations” on foot of the pandemic.
