The British government is now a shareholder in a company that plans high-end sex parties after the firm took advantage of a program to help businesses during the pandemic.
Killing Kittens—which was created by Emma Sayle, a school friend of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge—is a sex-tech company known for hosting lavish orgies at which guests have to pass a vetting process. When COVID hit, Killing Kittens signed up for a U.K. government scheme called the Future Fund, which helped it stay afloat when its in-person parties became untenable, and it was forced to turn to “Zorgies” (or Zoom orgies).
The terms of Future Fund loans contain a clause that converts the loan to equity at the borrower’s next fundraising. The government-run British Business Bank—which oversees the Future Fund—confirmed the project’s stake in Killing Kittens to the Financial Times.
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Sayle, who owns over a quarter of the sex-tech company, according to financial filings, said the business had raised over $1.2 million in its latest funding round, valuing the company at around $18 million in total. She told the FT that U.K. taxpayers owned around 1.5 percent of the business, adding: “The government has already made money on the investment.”
But the prospect of getting a good return on investment didn’t stop some skeptics, including British politicians, from criticizing the eyebrow-raising loan when it was first agreed to in 2020.
Sarah Champion, an MP of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, even called for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to “take steps to stop payments being made to the sex-party organizers.” Sayle hit back at the invective by pointing out that the loan cash was to build the digital side of the business, not fund sex parties. “A lot of this boils down to British queasiness about sex,” Sayle said of the criticism in a 2020 Daily Mail interview.
It’s not just Killing Kittens that Her Majesty’s Treasury now has on its books as a result of the Future Fund scheme. It owns shares in hundreds of businesses that took government cash during the pandemic, including Bolton Wanderers, a soccer team that plays in the third tier of English football, and Hybrid Air Vehicles, a company aiming to bring back blimps as an environmentally friendly option for modern aviation.
Last year, an annual report from Britain’s business department said the Future Fund had been blighted by fraud. As much as $35 million was flagged as being suspected fraudulent payments in the scheme, which gave out cash to over 1,100 startups.
But even then, there were arguably even more controversial plans the U.K. Chancellor Sunak cooked up to support businesses during the pandemic. The “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme—in which British diners would have their restaurant bills subsidized by 50 percent throughout August 2020 in order to support the hospitality industry—was heavily condemned for encouraging people to congregate indoors at the height of the pandemic. A 2021 study published in The Economic Journal even estimated that the scheme contributed to around 11 percent of all COVID cases detected in the U.K. in August and September in 2020.
Read it at Financial Times
