Edward C. Holmes: Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, School of Life and Environmental Sciences and School of Medical Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

In the interests of full-disclosure it should be noted Sydney University gets an estimated $534.1 million a year from selling bogus degrees to Chinese students. That’s a billion every two years - which amounts to 23% of total university revenue. That figure still doesn't include grants from China for various think tanks or joint-projects. Whistle-blower, Professor Babones says:

"Some students don't read and write English well enough and don't understand what to do...we end up with Mandarin-speaking students in groups where no one is able to speak English. It's an unspoken but widely understood rule... that we are expected to help students pass. Or at least not expected to be failing them. People are getting degrees who probably shouldn't."

That is selling fake degrees for mega-bucks - it's corruption - plain and simple. However Michael Spence, University of Sydney vice-chancellor, categorized the debate around Chinese influence as just "anti-China hysteria".

Meanwhile, according to a Financial Times article, "University of Technology Sydney is involved in a A$10m research partnership with CETC, a Chinese state-owned military technology company that developed an app security forces use to trace and detain Muslims (Uighurs)."

Edward C. Holmes is also the Honorary Visiting Professor, Fudan University, Shanghai, China and Guest Professor, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China . These types of positions are known to be highly suss. Although the financial details of this gig are not made public, there have been several cases recently exposing such arrangements as nothing more than cash delivery devices from the CCP in return for information and publishing of papers favourable to the CCP.

For example:
"Charles Lieber, the chair of the department of chemistry and chemical biology (at Harvard), is accused of hiding his involvement in China’s Thousand Talents Plan....Prosecutors say, he was paid $50,000 (£38,000) a month by the Wuhan University of Technology in China and living expenses up to $158,000. He was also awarded more than $1.5m to establish a research lab at the Chinese university.

In exchange, prosecutors allege, Lieber agreed to publish articles, organise international conferences and apply for patents on behalf of the Chinese university, among other things."

From Financial Times article:

"Edward Holmes, an Australian virologist who helped map and share the genetic sequence of the virus, said there was “no evidence” that Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 in humans, originated in a Wuhan laboratory. He said the closest known relative of Sars-Cov-2 was a bat virus named RaTG13, which was indeed kept at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But he added the bat virus, which was sampled in Yunnan province, had a level of genome sequence divergence from coronavirus equivalent to at least 20-50 years of evolutionary change. Thus, he does not believe it was responsible for Covid-19."