Nadim Zahawi dodging MORE tax than Lester Piggott?

by Martin Odoni

I do struggle to understand why this story is not high in the headlines; until I remember that The Minister Without Function Or The Right To Be In The Cabinet At All… er, I mean The Minister Without Portfolio, Nadim Zahawi, is a Tory, and Tories run about ninety-seven per cent of the British media. How silly of me to forget… It is yet another example of the casual corruption that is rife in the British Cabinet, no matter which MPs are currently staffing it.

Zahawi, it turns out, is an alleged tax dodger. More precisely, he is another of those extremely rich people that included, at the last count, all of them, who use loopholes to transfer funds overseas to reduce the amount of tax they pay on it. The overseas tax haven is Gibraltar – ah no wonder the Tories are so desperate not to lose it to Spain – and the wealth in question is some high value shares in the polling company Zahawi famously used to own, YouGov. The shares were allegedly held on his behalf by Gibraltar-based Balshore Investments. The value of the shares is estimated to be over £20 million, and should have been subject to £3.7 million in unpaid Capital Gains Tax when they were sold on in 2018.

Zahawi has repeatedly insisted that he, “does not have, and never has had, an interest in Balshore Investments and he is not a beneficiary,” which if you look closely at it, is not exactly a denial that he owes the tax. Who is holding the shares is not the interest as such, the interest is which firm the shares apply to i.e. YouGov.

The rather odd side of Zahawi’s denials is that, if he does not owe this tax, why has he now agreed to pay it, albeit so long after the fact? His credibility was not helped by his spokesperson over the weekend, who was asked directly to confirm whether Zahawi was now paying the tax. The response did not even sound like the question was ever asked; “As he has previously stated, Mr Zahawi’s taxes are properly declared and paid in the UK. He is proud to have built a British business that has become successful around the world.”

Does that mean “no”? Also, it still does not address whether Zahawi’s taxes ever get properly declared on time.

No, they were not

Well, whatever, but I am rather given to wonder why Zahawi even bothered appointing a spokesperson if it was not true. For now, we can only wonder how much use might that money have been to, say, the National Health Service, if the tax had been paid in time?

There are several worries over this. One is that the improprieties in Zahawi’s financial affairs were brought to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s attention before he made Zahawi his Chancellor Of The Exchequer in July last year (during the Tory rebellion). That Johnson might yet return to 10 Downing Street in the near future makes me tremble. That troglodyte just has absolutely no interest in right or wrong at all, no concept of it. But another worry is that Liz Truss also made Zahawi a Minister when she became Prime Minister – Minister for Equalities, of all things! Then Rishi Sunak, on taking over at Number 10, also made Zahawi a Minister, as well as party chairman.

It shows that the whole Conservative Party is just not interested in undoing the damage caused by corruption, let alone in preventing it. They are not ashamed of being corrupt, they are not even scared of being caught acting corruptly. They will rake off any money that enriches themselves, whether they are entitled to it or not, and they will simply sneer at anyone who exposes their conduct. Zahawi is the richest MP in the UK, with over £100 million to his name. Why does he need to keep absorbing more and more money?

Another serious concern is, how can Zahawi be allowed to get away with being so grasping, at a time when he is part of a Government shamelessly demanding the British lower classes get poorer and just put up with it? I mean, he is Minister Without Portfolio! It essentially means he has nothing to do! Why does he evade taxes when he does nothing in work, while medical staff working their every waking hour in the NHS to save lives cannot even get an inflation-equalling pay rise?

But also, there is the omni-present resentment that it is “one law for us and no law for them.” Remember Lester Piggott? He was the superstar jockey who was jailed in 1987 for three years (although in practice he was let out after one year) for failing to declare earnings that should have been taxed to the value of £3.25 million, and using false names on overseas bank accounts to conceal some of his wealth.

Now, allowing for inflation, you can argue that Piggott’s fraud was the greater. But it was clearly perfectly comparable to what Zahawi has been doing. Piggott’s conviction was front page news. Zahawi’s possible tax-dodging is barely registering on the media radar.

It seems that when the law-makers are also the law-breakers, the British media decide that it does not ‘count’ in the same way. But that is the whole point; it is the reason why the Conservatives are no longer scared of their sleaze being found out.