I agree that Richard is quite picky about his helicopter. Paying the kind of money he has and will for this work, I don't blame him one bit.
A couple of points need to be mentioned here. First aircraft operated by government organizations fall under a classification of "Public Use". So aircraft operated under that classification have much different requirements. So the work conducted by PHP would have been spelled out in the contract for that work. So without having any knowledge of the contract, it would be hard to say what exactly happened.
Next, under the requirements of a Part 145 repair station, very few of the maintenance personnel have to hold and FAA mechanic's certificate. In fact the work is normally signed off by not only the person working on the item, but also the inspector. Plus they would not use their A&P certificate number, but their assigned company number on the sign offs.