Unatrac is the British arm of the Mansour Group, a business empire owned by Mohamed Mansour, an Egyptian billionaire. He served as a minister under dictator Hosni Mubarak and praised his current authoritarian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for making the country “much more stable”.
Steve Goodrich, research officer at Transparency International, said that the time has come to end what he calls “the corrupting influence of big money” in British politics.
“So long as there are no limits on political donations there will be a suspicion that favours can be bought with large amounts of hard cash. There are only so many times you can claim it is pure chance when party donors benefit from government decisions around the time of their contributions,” he said.
Conservative Communities minister Robert Jenrick has faced calls to resign after it emerged that he intervened in a planning decision for property developer Richard Desmond, who subsequently donated £12,000 to the Tories earlier this year.
‘Special treatment’
UK Export Finance, an arm of the Department for International Trade, provides a mixture of direct financing and loan guarantees to British firms operating abroad. The idea is that companies and banks involved in an export deal should not lose out if an overseas buyer does not pay, or makes late payments.
UK Export Finance aims to break even, but the British taxpayer makes up any losses.
On 20 January, UK Export Finance announced that it was supporting a £1.5 million loan to “enable the sale of machinery from Unatrac to Mota-Engil Africa, underpinning work on roads in the North East of Uganda”.
A representative of Unatrac said at the time:“The deal will underpin and enhance our supply chain partnerships with prime contractors involved in infrastructure improvement in Uganda.”
UK Export Finance declined to give details of the deal, saying it was treating openDemocracy’s written questions as a Freedom of Information request. It did say, however, that the agency’s decision to support Unatrac was made after lengthy consideration.
Unatrac has emerged as a major Tory donor in recent years, giving more than £600,000 since 2015. The firm gave the party £75,000 ahead of last December’s general election.
A Mohamed Mansour is also recorded as having given £12,500 to the Conservatives in 2017. It is unclear if this is the same Mohamed Mansour who owns Unatrac. Mansour is listed as Egyptian national on Companies House. Foreign citizens are generally prohibited from donating to British politics.
Scottish National Party MP Martin Docherty-Hughes said that the Unatrac finance deal was “yet another in a growing list of Tory party donors getting special treatment on government policy”.
Docherty-Hughes said that like football club owners, political donors need a ‘fit and proper person’ test.
“Good governance and the public interest means we need to know exactly how the Conservatives consider it to be proper to continue to accept donations from a company owned by a politically exposed person, with all of the conflict-of-interest questions that then raises.”
‘Serious concerns’
Mohamed Mansour is a household name in Egypt, where his business empire includes car dealerships, real estate and the country’s main supermarket chain. The Mansour Group acquired Unatrac, the Caterpillar dealership in East and West Africa, in 1997.
Mansour has been involved in politics, too. He was transport minister for four years under President Mubarak, who was overthrown in the ‘Arab Spring’ uprising of 2011. The same year Mansour was linked to a major corruption scandal in his native land involving members of his extended family.
The Conservatives have received donations from other businesses with Egytpian links. As previously reported, OCI UK Ltd has given the Tories £200,000 since 2017.
Part of the business dynasty built by Egyptian tycoon Onsi Sawiris, OCI UK is controlled by Sawiris’s son Nassef. In 2018, Nassef Sawiris struck a deal to take over English football club Aston Villa.
Print
Peter Geoghegan Jenna Corderoy | Radio Free (2020-06-19T15:29:23+00:00) Exclusive: Egyptian billionaire’s firm’s £1.5m export deal unveiled days after Tory donation. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/06/19/exclusive-egyptian-billionaires-firms-1-5m-export-deal-unveiled-days-after-tory-donation/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.