Tory chairman sacked over tax scandal with Gibraltar company

Part of the shares in his polling company (42.5 per cent) were in his dad's name and owned by a company registered on the Rock, says El Confidencial.

The chairman of the British Conservative Party, Nadhim Zahawi, was sacked yesterday following an investigation by the Prime Minister's independent ethics adviser, Rishi Sunak, who allegedly found that Zahawi violated the ministerial code with his tax affairs.
According to 'El Confidencial', the Tory Prime Minister had been "in the spotlight for several days" after he admitted last Monday that, during his two-month stint at the head of the Treasury, he was forced to pay £5.6 million to the Treasury from a tax office that was related to the sale of shares in a polling company he founded, YouGov.

The newspaper notes that 42.5 per cent of those shares were in the name of Zahawi's father and owned by a Rock-registered company, Balshore Investments.

Zahawi had explained - continues El Confidencial - that the British Treasury accepted that his father was entitled to the ownership of shares in the founder of YouGov, although it "disagreed about the way in which they had been allocated".

The key to the matter is that, while it was taken as "negligence" and not "deliberate", the investigation by the prime minister's independent ethics adviser believes that, "by failing to declare HMRC's ongoing enquiry before July 2022, the now former chairman of the formation failed to comply with the ministerial code's requirement to declare any interests that could give rise to a conflict".

'The Confidential' reflects on the doubts left by the case, of whether the trust controlled by Zahawi's father "could be a haven to keep his money away from the taxman until the day he migrates to a tax haven".