Elsewhere, 33-year-old Mayfair property tycoon Jamie Reuben has donated £586,250.00 to the Tories since Boris Johnson became party leader. The Queen’s Park Rangers director, who is also heir to a huge family fortune, made donations only to Johnson himself in the previous year, amounting to £50,000.
The Conservatives’ top ten property donors gave more than £5.7million to the party since last July – compared to just £1.5million in the final twelve months of Theresa May’s premiership.
Other major Tory donors with major interests in property include John Beckwith, who gave a quarter of a million pounds to the Conservatives last year, Richard Caring, who gave over £217,000, and developer Jeremy Knight-Adams, who donated £100,000, as did hotelier Lord Rocco Forte.
New money
openDemocracy’s analysis found a number of figures linked to the property sector have emerged as Conservative donors for the first time over the past year.
Adeyheath Limited has given £260,000 since August. The property firm is controlled by Berish Berger, who is the director of more than 130 companies including the London-based Greaterheaven and Makepeace Investments.
In November, a company called Conegate Limited donated £75,000 to the Conservatives. It is ultimately controlled by West Ham United owner David Sullivan. As mayor of London, Boris Johnson was heavily criticised for his role in the deal that saw West Ham take over the Olympic stadium. The deal is estimated to have cost taxpayers in excess of £300 million.
In March, the Conservatives received £100,000 from luxury property developer Nick Candy. In 2016 a former business partner accused Nick Candy and his brother Christian of tax evasion. The brothers won the case in the high court but the judge remarked that “none of the protagonists emerge from this trial with great credit”.
The Conservatives have also received almost £25,000 from Bruce Ritchie. The founder of Residential Land was the co-chair of the controversial President’s Club, which was heavily criticised in 2018 after it emerged that young women at the men-only event were allegedly propositioned for sex and asked to wear skimpy clothes and sign non-disclosure agreements.
Property tycoon Christopher Moran gave the Conservatives £8,500 in January, his first donation since 2017. Moran – who flew Boris Johnson back from a DUP fundraiser on his private jet in 2018 – has been accused of turning a blind eye to sex workers in a Chelsea building he owns. (Moran denied any knowledge of the situation.)
Among other donors linked to the property sector are a number involved in care homes. Hampshire’s Churchill Retirement Living – a leading provider of homes to the over-sixties – gave £150,000.
The median value – the mid-point in the ranking – of a donation from the property sector to the Conservatives was £95,744.
But the party also received dozens of often smaller donations from companies with little obvious footprint that are registered at Companies House as being involved in property or real estate. The cumulative value of these donations runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
‘Beholden’
Steve Goodrich, research officer at Transparency International, said: “When political parties become heavily reliant on a small number of big donors it creates the perception, and quite possibly the reality, they are beholden to narrow sectional interests.
“Our research has found there’s a deep public suspicion that those with the deepest pockets wield outsized and undue influence over decision-making in Westminster.”
Reacting to openDemocracy’s findings, the Scottish National Party MP Martin Docherty-Hughes accused the Conservatives of being “in hock” to wealthy donors.
“This is yet more evidence of the dependence of the Conservatives on rich backers that will only increase concerns about ‘cash-for-access’ in British politics. What do these donors get for their money? Surely the public has a right to know?”
Docherty-Hughes criticised Boris Johnson for refusing to release a report into Russian interference in British politics that is widely expected to name a number of Tory party donors with links to the Kremlin who have stepped up their donations in recent years.
“I thought when the Tories delayed publication of the Russia report it was because they wanted to avoid the embarrassment of showing the extent to which Russian oligarchs had infiltrated the Conservative Party.
“Now I’m beginning to wonder if it is because they don’t want comparisons drawn with their own increasingly oligarchic way of governing, where normal planning laws are for the little people and the rich get to the front of the queue,” Docherty-Hughes said.
When asked by openDemocracy about previous donations, a Conservative Party spokesperson said: “All reportable donations are properly and transparently declared to the Electoral Commission, published by them, and comply fully with the law.”
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Peter Geoghegan Jenna Corderoy | Radio Free (2020-06-26T14:24:13+00:00) Exclusive: Property tycoons gave Tories more than £11m in less than a year. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/06/26/exclusive-property-tycoons-gave-tories-more-than-11m-in-less-than-a-year/
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