28 Feb 2026 (10 April 2026 Update)
The Anatomy of a Compliance Collapse: When Silence Becomes Systemic Risk
It is a staggering reality of modern corporate governance when the entities tasked with enforcing rules become the very entities hiding from them.
Currently, Everest Miles—a contracting firm linked to allegations of monitoring and attacking residents—and Veriforce, their elite accreditation body, are categorically refusing to provide basic compliance information, namely their mandatory public liability insurance details. This refusal is not occurring in a vacuum; it is unfolding within a case deemed so severe by the Cabinet Office that it has triggered a formal review into whether TLT Solicitors, the law firm acting for NatWest, remains suitable to be recommended for government work.
When the stakes reach the Cabinet Office, the refusal to hand over a standard insurance certificate ceases to be an administrative delay. It becomes a glaring indicator of a systemic contagion that threatens to unravel the reputations and portfolios of some of the UK’s largest institutions.
The £13 Million Question: TLT’s Reputational Calamity
TLT is currently one of the fastest-growing law firms in the UK, heavily reliant on lucrative public sector frameworks. To understand the scale of their exposure, one only needs to look at their government footprint: TLT’s legal work for the UK police forces alone accounts for nearly £13 million in fees.
The NatWest Fallout: A Decade-Long Shadow
The blast radius of this review extends far beyond the law firm, striking directly at their institutional paymaster: NatWest.
The timeline of executive movement at the bank speaks volumes. Just one day after the draft of this six-month investigation was distributed, NatWest Group abruptly announced the departure of its heavily implicated Group Chief Risk Officer, Keiran Foad. In the banking sector, Chief Risk Officers do not exit suddenly during a period of intense regulatory scrutiny without a profound underlying cause.
NatWest is a systemically important Tier 1 bank, and its historical ties to the government make it uniquely vulnerable to public sector scandals. The utilization of compromised legal and contractor networks to execute asset recovery is not a localized error; it is a failure of the bank’s Enterprise-Wide Risk Management Framework. The fallout from this exposure—and the sudden decapitation of their risk leadership—is an event that will likely haunt NatWest Group’s corporate governance and shareholder confidence for the next decade.
The Veriforce Paradox: Forgetting the Core Mandate
Perhaps the most alarming red flag in this entire ecosystem belongs to Veriforce.
Veriforce did not begin as a generic administrative body; its origins lie in the early 1990s South Louisiana oil and gas industry—an environment representing the highest possible physical and environmental risk. The company was literally built on the premise that strict, verifiable safety and insurance compliance prevents catastrophic offshore disasters.
For an accreditation body born in the crucible of the oil industry to now find itself incapable (or unwilling) to enforce the most basic level of compliance—a contractor’s insurance certificate—is a paradox that destroys its core mandate. If Veriforce CHAS allows contractors to weaponize their “Elite” badge while shielding them from insurance transparency, they are no longer mitigating risk; they are actively masking it.
The Apax Partners Problem: A Portfolio Built on Sand?
This catastrophic failure in basic compliance inevitably leads to the apex of the financial food chain: Apax Partners. As the massive private equity firm backing Veriforce, Apax relies on the premise that its portfolio companies represent the gold standard in supply chain risk management (SCRM).
By allowing Veriforce CHAS to operate as an opaque shield for corporate liability rather than a transparent auditor, Apax is actively betraying its own pledge to “put investors at the heart of everything we do.” Instead of protecting investor capital, they are exposing it to the compounding, systemic risk of a compliance portfolio that collapses the moment someone actually asks to see the paperwork. Apax states that principles have a price; that price is currently being calculated in real-time by the Cabinet Office, and it is a bill their investors will ultimately have to pay.
To fully grasp the incestuous nature of this compliance collapse, one need only look at the financial architect of Apax Partners itself. Bharat Patel, the Global Head of Finance at Apax—the executive directly responsible for the firm’s “Regulatory Reporting” and compliance—spent part of his extensive career inside the exact institution at the center of this growing mess: NatWest Group. It is a profoundly messy, deeply concerning conflict of interest that closes the loop on the entire enterprise. It proves that these entities are not operating at arm’s length; they share the same corporate DNA, making the prospect of genuine, independent oversight not just unlikely, but structurally impossible.
Update: More facts about Everest Miles Contractors.
On Wayback machine there’s no entries for 2025 for their homepage:
… during which period they had SMAS accreditation ( SMAS Worksafe is directly owned by The Citation Group not Apax), which appears lost now as it doesn’t appear on their website and they took the unusual step of having now having two CHAS logos:
Constructionline won’t answer any emails from us.
Apax Partners is the primary owner of Alcumus who owns Safecontractor.
So this means:
CHAS – Apax
Safecontractor – Apax
Constructionline – won’t reply.
SMAS – Evidently lost and removed. We applaud Citation Group for their integrity.
In any future litigation arising from this matter, we would expect a representative from Apax to be called as a witness to explain their rationale. Their current stance appears to be that Safecontractor, CHAS, and Veriforce can systematically ignore all insurance requests. With potentially thousands of residents at risk across the Oakley Property portfolio alone, basic compliance must be taken seriously.
We also wonder whether Mr Patel’s Directors & Officers (D&O) insurance in his role at Apax covers all this? Read more about insurance and our cases study here.
Further Apax analysis (password protected)
Update 16 March 2026
We find a core aspect of concerning practices which seem to indicate corruption is the resetting of the narrative. Entities will ask you the same questions for months like they have never heard of the issues but these companies have known for almost a year (see below).
Also any substantive questions are completely ignored, see here … https://propertycorruption.com/veriforce-chas2/ yet we get requests like:
“I would ask that you remove the images of Veriforce’s CEO and CFO from you website also.
Thank you in anticipation
Sam James
Global General Counsel“
…but never follow up with any legal action. Is the reason for this the same reason why nationwide can’t enforce the loan – because it would mean going to court.
That people put their trust in the Veriforce and Apax is looking more suspect by the day and that they have zero interest that its part of a huge cover up is deeply concerning.
10 April 2026
– The fact that Apax allows a certified contractor like Everest Miles to completely ignore communications regarding contractor attacks without consequence renders the Veriforce CHAS accreditation etc fundamentally worthless as a genuine risk-management tool. For the large enterprises that mandate this badge to vet their supply chains and stabilize their insurance profiles, this lack of actual enforcement transforms a presumed safety shield into a massive, deceptive liability. By harboring unresponsive actors while still collecting subscription fees, the scheme leaves hiring clients fully exposed to the exact vicarious liability and reputational damage they paid to avoid. Ultimately, a compliance platform is only as valuable as its enforcement; if the wider market realizes that this system provides a false sense of security and fails to protect its primary end-users, the foundational trust in the platform will collapse, meaning the true financial valuation of Apax’s asset should be severely discounted.
We wonder if these companies have the same view?
- Amey
- Balfour Beatty
- Bouygues UK
- Costain
- Derwent London
- HS2 (High Speed Two)
- Kier Group
- Mace
- McCarthy Stone
- MD Group
- Mitie
- Morgan Sindall
- National Highways
- Network Rail
- SCS JV (Skanska Costain STRABAG Joint Venture)
- Skanska UK
- VGC Group
- Vinci Construction UK