Crown Agents

Crown Agents are exactly what the name implies, an agent of Her Majesty the Queen. It was founded in 1833 as Crown Agents for the Colonies to administer the British Empire: printing the stamps and banknotes of the colonies; provided technical, engineering, and financial services (as a private bank to the colonial monetary authorities), government officials, heads of state; served as arms procurers, quartermasters, and paymasters for the colonial armies.

According to its own account:

Crown Agents is an international development company providing direct assistance, consultancy and training for public sector modernisation, particularly in financial management, procurement and logistics...For many years Crown Agents was a British public corporation. In 1997 we transferred to the private sector as a limited company owned by a new entity, The Crown Agents Foundation.

The Crown Agents foundation Elected Members include: Barclays Bank plc, BBC World Service Trust, British Council, British Telecommunications plc, Caribbean Council for Europe, Commonwealth Business Council, The Co-operative Bank, FirstCaribbean International Bank, Barbados, Securicor plc, Securities Institute, Standard Chartered Bank, Tate & Lyle plc, Transparency International (Berlin) and Unilever plc.

Permanent Members are the Aga Khan Foundation, British Overseas NGOs for Development, Charities Aid Foundation, The Chartered Institute of Building,The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, Christian Aid, Richard Calvert (formerly Mr Mark Lowcock) (for the Secretary of State for International Development), Institute of Development Studies, International Chamber of Commerce UK, Mr Aiichiro Yamamoto (for Japan International Cooperation Agency), The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum, The Royal Commonwealth Society, The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Worldaware.

People

Their board includes: Stephen Watson — who has recently retired as Principal of Henley Management College, Paddy Coulter — the Director of the Reuters Foundation Programme at Oxford University, Ben Hayman — who has worked for Coca Cola, Unilever and Ford, John Heskett — Baring Asset Management Worldwide, Sean Sutcliffe — Previously Executive Vice President at BG Group plc and Bryan Stevens — BP and Jenny Borden, present Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) — now known as Practical Action.

And of course Crown Agents do work in far-flung parts of the empire such Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Independent reported that: "Crown Agents, a privatized development assistance firm, has become the first British company to win a contract in the American programme to rebuild Iraq. It will be a subcontractor to International Resources Group (IRG), a US professional services firm providing technical assistance for planning and management of the reconstruction and rehabilitation activities in Iraq."

Leaked documents (Anonymous, 2018–2021)

A set of Crown Agents bid documents appears in the “Trojan Horses of HMG” release of leaked UK government tender files. They show Crown Agents bidding for a range of Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) programmes:

• Jordan – Police Reform and Capacity Building (PRCB) (ITT 3166), a bid in the region of £12.5m (the programme was ultimately awarded to Axiom International).
• Iraq counter-terrorism: CSSF Iraq CT Programme – Investigations (ITT 3018) and a pilot Understanding and Degrading Daesh Finance (proposed value around £0.5m).
• Libya – Sub-National Governance and Decentralisation (ITT 2441) and Addressing Gender Issues in Libya (ITT 1455). A leaked copy of the call-off for the sub-national governance programme, marked as fully executed, records a signed contract (CPG/2793/2018) under the CSSF Framework 2018 (CPG/2350/2018) between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Crown Agents Limited (company number 3259922). The call-off title is CSSF Libya: Supporting Sub-National Governance and Decentralisation for Greater Stability. Services were to start no later than 1 April 2019 and be completed by 31 October 2019, with an option to extend by two further 12-month periods until 31 October 2021. The recipient is the British Embassy Tripoli (Tunis Office). The German development agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) is named as subcontractor. The financial-limit amount is not clearly legible in the leaked scan and is not restated here.
• Framework and large support contracts including the CSSF Framework Lots A–C, Africa Infrastructure Project Preparation Facility and Afghanistan/Iraq Life Support Services.

By comparison, Contracts Finder records two published CSSF awards to Crown Agents totalling about £6.32m (OTD Covid-19 Response, £3m, 2020; Iraq Military Education Development, £3,318,363, 2021), while FCO/FCDO transparency data record Crown Agents-named spending of about £78.4m (2012–2024).

Note on sourcing. The material in this section comes from leaked tender and bid documents of unverified provenance that were published online under the “Anonymous” name. The figures are the values proposed or tendered for in those documents (bids, Statements of Requirement and pricing schedules), not confirmed contract awards or payments; official award figures from Contracts Finder and FCDO transparency data are given alongside for comparison. The leakers’ own commentary is not reproduced here.