LONDON (Bywire News) - The Conservative Advisory Board - an exclusive club for the super-wealthy who donate to the Tories - was revealed last week.
For a bargain price of £250k, donors get regular meetings with senior members of the government including Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, where it’s been revealed that funders demand lower taxes and public spending cuts.
Here, we look into who has donated at least £250k to the Conservative Party since 2020 - the rumoured “price” to get into the elite club - including those with links to Putin and the wife of an arms dealer:
Name: Lubov Chernukhin
Donated: £325k
Lubov Chernukhin has given more than £1.7m to the Tories in the last eight years - making her the biggest female Tory donor in history.
She is perhaps most well-known for her love of playing tennis with Prime Ministers. She’s previously spent £45k to play tennis with former Prime Minister David Cameron and Mayor of London Boris Johnson. She then paid £135k to be invited to a ladies’ night dinner with Theresa May’s cabinet in April 2019 and spent £45k in an auction to play tennis with Boris again last year.
Her husband, Vladimir Chernukhin, previously served in Vladimir Putin’s cabinet. Questions have been raised before as to whether or not the Tories should be accepting their donations due to their links to Russia - the majority of the Chernukhins’ donations happened after Vladimir Cherunkhin received $8m from a company linked to the Russian billionaire politician Suleyman Kerimov.
Name: Malcolm Healey
Donated: £750k
Wren Kitchens founder Malcolm Healey has given £1.5m to the Tories since 2017 and is one of the party’s biggest individual donors. Last year, he made three separate donations - two donations of £250k, and one for £500k.
The first donation came just weeks after Wren Kitchen laid off staff because they were anticipating a lack of demand due to the pandemic, a move which Unite called an “insult” when staff could have been placed on furlough.
Name: Heather Coffey
Donated: 450k
Not much is known about Coffey, who left a large sum of money to the party in her will. She was called an “extremely private” woman who died with a mysterious £9m fortune and no next of kin. It was reported that she left the money after meeting her “wonderful” Henley MP at a village protest - Boris Johnson.
Name: Peak Scientific Holdings Ltd
Donated: £250k
Peak Scientific Holdings gave £250k to the Conservatives just a week after Chancellor Rishi Sunak toured their headquarters. The company had used the furlough scheme for employees early on during the pandemic, but it’s not known if they repaid the taxpayer as well as donating a quarter of a million pounds to the party.
Their Director, June MacGeachy, has also previously donated £23k to the Conservatives in 2015-6.
Name: Britannia Financial Group
Donated: £350k
Global investment bank Britannia Financial Group has donated over £470k since 2019, including a £350k donation last year.
Earlier this year, Phoenix Media reported on a possible link between Britannia and the 2019 coup attempt in Venezuela and the opposition party.
Name: Javad Maranda
Donated: £250k
Impeccable timing - Maranda’s donation of £250k came just two weeks before he received an OBE for his services to business and philanthropy. In total, he’s given over £600k to the Conservatives in the last six years.
He is also a shareholder of 21 Hans Place Investments Ltd, which is listed in the Panama Papers - the company is registered in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands.
Name: John Gore
Donated: 250k
Billionaire theatre producer John Gore has given a staggering £6m in total to the Tories, including two donations of £250k and £20k last year.
Gore resides in the Bahamas, where there are no taxes on income or corporation tax. However, Gore insisted to The Mirror that:
“I am employed by a US company so that’s where I pay my tax. A big amount. That is where I am [a] tax resident.”
He also said that he is registered as living in the tax haven “because they needed an address” - but it’s unclear why he does not use his real address or country of residence.
Name: Ann R Said
Donated: 250k
Although she appears as Ann R Said, her name is actually Rosemary Said and is the wife of arms deal fixer Wafic Said.
Wafic Said is perhaps best known for his role in helping British companies to win the Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia. An investigation by the Serious Fraud Office was subsequently launched but was called off in 2006 after political pressure and threats. Wafic Said, a Monacan resident, previously donated to the Tories before rules were put in place that only those on the UK electoral register can donate.
Rosemary Said has donated more than £2m in the last ten years.
Name: Howard Shore
Donated: £250k
A long-term Conservative donor and a Brexit backer who previously boasted that he is an “unashamed capitalist”, Shore has so far given almost £1m to the party, including £10k to Sajid Javid in his bid to become Prime Minister.
Shore is also the founder and Chairman of investment banking firm Shore Capital, which are registered in the tax haven of Guernsey. The company has also made almost £8m in donations to the Conservatives, including payments to Tory MPs Bob Blackman and Henry Smith.
Name: Flowidea Ltd
Donated: £250k
Long-term Tory donors Flowidea have given almost £3m in the last ten years and also gave money to two Conservative MPs last year, Mark Francois and Philip Davies.
Flowidea’s Director is billionaire banker Henry Angest, who has previously donated to right-wing groups such as Freedom Association, which promotes climate science denial.
Angest was also embroiled in the “cash for access” scandal in 2012, where it was revealed that he, and other wealthy business people, had given money in exchange for access to top government ministers.
Conservative co-treasurer Peter Cruddas was forced to resign after he was filmed by journalists from The Sunday Times saying that he could give “premier access” to then-Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne in exchange for a donation of £250,000 - the exact amount that it costs donors to join the elusive Conservative Advisory Board.
In the sting, Cruddas told the journalists, posing as wealth fund executives, that:
“If you’re unhappy about something, we will listen to you and put it into the policy committee at No 10 [Downing Street]. We feed all feedback to the policy committee.”
Analysis
Although the Advisory Board is now public knowledge, no donor has admitted being a member. However, it’s clear that the waters between the Conservatives and their wealthy donors are very murky indeed.
Nothing has changed since the “cash for access” scandal - and it’s increasingly clear that the mega-wealthy elite are willing to part with their cash to lobby the most senior government Tory ministers to get what they want with ease.
(Written by Jess Miller, edited by Klaudia Fior)