"2007, it was revealed that David Abrahams, who was deputy chair of Labour Friends of Israel until 2002, had made secret and illegal donations through junior employees of 600,000 pounds sterling (approximately $1.2 million) to the Labour Party. Abrahams, ""a Jewish millionaire,"" admitted in The Jewish Chronicle that he concealed his activity because ""I didn't want Jewish money and the Labour Party being put together."" ""The Telegraph"" ran a photograph of Abrahams with Israeli former ambassador to Britain, Zvi Heifetz, and ""insinuated that Israel was the source of the illegal campaign contributions."" According to an article in ""Haaretz"", several in"
"Labour party proxy and undeclared donations (2007) The Labour party proxy and undeclared donations was a political scandal involving the British Labour Party in November and December 2007, when it was discovered that, contrary to legislation passed during the Blair Government, the Party had been receiving significant financial donations made anonymously via third parties. The careers of Labour Party treasurer Peter Watt and the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Wendy Alexander, were curtailed as a consequence. In May 2009 the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence for any prosecution relating to these events. On 25 November 2007,"
"David Cameron questioned Brown's integrity during Prime Minister's Question Time and Liberal Democrat leadership contender Chris Huhne asked police to get involved, in particular as regards the planning permissions granted to Abrahams. Political funding in the United Kingdom Labour party proxy and undeclared donations (2007) The Labour party proxy and undeclared donations was a political scandal involving the British Labour Party in November and December 2007, when it was discovered that, contrary to legislation passed during the Blair Government, the Party had been receiving significant financial donations made anonymously via third parties. The careers of Labour Party treasurer Peter Watt"
"named by the Conservative Party as having loaned it £3.6m. On 12 October 2007 he was accused by Labour MPs of being allowed to heavily fund local Conservative organisations in marginal seats of his choosing. Ashcroft has insisted such funding is legitimate. Significant donations made to the Conservative Party by Bearwood Corporate Services, a company controlled by Ashcroft, have also come under scrutiny. The trading status of the company, and thus the validity of donations totalling £5.1m between 2003 and 2008, is unclear and became the subject of an investigation by the Electoral Commission begun in October 2008. Both Labour"
"secretly made £630,000 in donations to the Labour Party, by channelling the donations through four different individuals in what was thought to have been a breach of the electoral law on transparent disclosure. The Donorgate scandal put pressure on then Prime Minister Gordon Brown who set up an internal enquiry, although no report has ever been published. Abrahams was subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing by the police, according to a statement issued by his solicitor Louis Charalambous, a partner with the London law firm Simons Muirhead and Burton, in April 2008. The BBC spotlighted Abrahams in their 'Political Lives' series"
"a major problem for the Labour Party during this period; a ""cash for peerages"" scandal under Tony Blair resulted in the drying up of many major sources of donations. Declining party membership, partially due to the reduction of activists' influence upon policy-making under the reforms of Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair, also contributed to financial problems. Between January and March 2008, the Labour Party received just over £3 million in donations and were £17 million in debt; compared to the Conservatives' £6 million in donations and £12 million in debt. In the 2010 general election on 6 May that year,"
"caught up in a further financial scandal in 2007, for he was responsible for party finances, which included more than £630,000 in illegal donations from David Abrahams. Dromey again claimed to know nothing of the donations, with critics wondering why he had not examined the issue more closely Harriet Harman, Dromey's wife, was also caught up in the affair, as her staff had solicited and accepted illegal donations totalling £5,000. As a result of this incident, there was growing concern about the fitness of Dromey to act as treasurer and Mark McDonald challenged Dromey for the position at re-election. McDonald"
"emerged that, in the time since Prime Minister Gordon Brown had come to power, Abrahams was now Labour's third largest donor behind Lord Sainsbury of Turville (£2 million) and Iranian businessman Mahmoud Khayami (£320,000 in September 2007). (Mr Khayami's donations subsequently came under some scrutiny in the press, though there was no indication that they were in any way illegal.) Abrahams has donated at least £548,850 since 2003, via two colleagues, his solicitor and the wife of an employee. Abrahams's secretary Janet Kidd ""gave"" £80,000, while builder Ray Ruddick – who has ""given"" a total of £196,000 according to a"
"million to the Conservative Party since 2001. Nine were not identifiable from official donor records, another source was identified as official funding from the Electoral Commission, and one was a Labour Party donor, the GMB union. Among the donors to and prominent members of the Conservative Party were seven Conservative peers, including Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover, who had donated nearly £3m to the Conservative Party since 2005. Jonathan Wood, who was the biggest shareholder in Northern Rock bank when it collapsed in 2007 and later tried to sue the then Labour government over its handling of the bank's nationalization,"
"asked Patel to switch using this unsecured loan approach. He agreed and loaned £1.5 m to the party, telling them that he would be prepared to change the loan into a donation at some point in the future. Over the next few days stories were printed which stated that the Labour Party had borrowed £3.5 million from private individuals during 2005, the year of a general election. It was subsequently revealed that a total of £13.95 million had been loaned by wealthy individuals to support Labour's election campaign. The figures released mean the bulk of the £17.94 m the party"
"the donation. The scandal surrounding the revelations led the Conservative Party chairman, Grant Shapps to ask the Labour leadership to disclose details of any private meetings with Flowers and to return a £50,000 donation to Ed Balls's office that Flowers had backed. Flowers has been involved with a large number of charities, including being a trustee of both the Terrence Higgins Trust, and for 12 years the Lifeline project, which worked in the field of drug abuse. Following the scandal of November 2013, the Lifeline project stated that at the time of his resignation he was under investigation following alleged"
"disapproved. Abrahams contends that Mendelsohn had known since April, and had encouraged the process. Mendelsohn denies this. The General Secretary of the Labour Party, Peter Watt, resigned on 26 November, after saying he took full responsibility. In his monthly press conference on 27 November, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said donations to the Labour Party by Abrahams through intermediaries were ""completely unacceptable"" and would be repaid. The Electoral Commission is seeking to investigate under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 why they were given wrong names and what checks Labour made into its ""donors"", and has since called in"
"amount which in fact he had not reported. He faces an investigation by Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, for a possible breach of the ministerial code. On 31 March 2006 the Conservative Party published a list of 13 wealthy individuals and companies to whom it owed a total of £15.95 million: The identity of 10 backers it had repaid – including a number of foreign nationals – was not revealed. These loans had totalled £5 million. Some of these lenders were concerned not to reveal their identity fearing that it might compromise their existing business arrangements"
"""failure to report on time is a serious matter"" though the case was not handed over to the police. On 24 June 2007, in what was a close contest Harman was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. Alan Johnson had led in all but the first of the previous rounds, but when second-preference votes had been redistributed after the fourth round, Harman stood elected with 50.43% of the vote to Johnson's 49.56% In November 2007, it emerged that property developer David Abrahams' secretary Janet Kidd had donated £5,000 to Harman's successful deputy leadership bid. After an investigation by ""The"
"and turned down a donation of £5,000 offered by Mrs Kidd; but it was subsequently accepted by Benn's team when made under the name of Mr Abrahams. Kidd offered a similar ""donation"" to the leadership campaign of Gordon Brown, but was turned down as she was not a known donor. On 3 December 2007 Peter Hain, on BBC Radio, admitted that some donations to his own Labour deputy leadership campaign ""were not registered as they should have been"". At the time of Abrahams's attempted offer of £5,000 towards Hilary Benn's campaign for the office of Deputy Prime Minister, and his"
"but loans of any amount do not have to be declared provided they are made on commercial terms. This loophole raises accusations of undue secrecy and potentially calls into question the probity of those involved in procurement and handling of such large and anonymous sums, particularly when the elected party treasurer was unaware of the existence of the loans. Lord Levy, a close friend of Tony Blair (who was the Prime Minister's personal envoy to the Middle East, as well as tennis partner), had raised funds for Labour and was identified in the press as a key figure in arranging"
"party being linked to the award of a peerage arose when Paul Drayson donated £555,000 to the Labour Party. His company, Powderject (now part of Novartis), had also received a valuable government contract to make vaccines. Cash for Honours Cash for Honours (also Cash for Peerages, Loans for Lordships, Loans for Honours or Loans for Peerages) was a political scandal in the United Kingdom in 2006 and 2007 concerning the connection between political donations and the award of life peerages. A loophole in electoral law in the United Kingdom means that although anyone donating even small sums of money to"
"been given previously through another intermediary, solicitor John McCarthy. Another go-between used by Abrahams, Janet Dunn, who is a lifelong Conservative Party supporter and a lollipop lady by profession, has subsequently claimed that she never knowingly paid any money to the Labour Party; she had only on one occasion signed a blank cheque for Mr Abrahams for £25,000 after he had paid a similar amount into her own bank account. ""I thought it was just a bit of business"", her husband has said. However a donation of £25,000 in her name was received by the Labour Party in 2003, although"
"the Crown Prosecution Service for briefings and advice. In December 2007, the Metropolitan Police wrote to the Labour Party saying that ""the donated money was no longer an issue for the police"". Mr Abrahams and his middlemen were also cleared of any wrongdoing. It was also discovered that the £630,000 donated had not been returned to Mr Abrahams, although Harriet Harman had returned the £5,000 donated to her. On 28 June 2008, Wendy Alexander announced her resignation as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party, due to pressure on her following the donation scandal. She said it was with ""deep regret"""
"m on commercial terms) to the Labour Party and contributed £1.5 m to a City Academy under a government scheme, withdrew his acceptance on the grounds of press intrusion into his private life. Townsley, who was the subject of an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, was followed by property millionaire Sir David Garrard, who withdrew his name in March 2006. Sir Gulam Noon, the British-Indian food company millionaire, was also nominated by the Labour Party after having made donations and loaned money (he also had his nomination rejected by the Appointments Commission). Sir Gulam told ""The Times"" newspaper a"
"for donations to the Labour Party. It was later discovered that Blair had given an honour to two-thirds of people who had donated over £50,000 to the Labour Party; donors who had given over £1,000,000 were either awarded with a life peerage or a knighthood. In 2007, Blair resigned and Gordon Brown took over the position of Prime Minister. Brown started to remove most of those who were seen as ""Tony's Cronies"" from the Cabinet, ending accusations of cronyism. However, there were reports of Labour MPs trying to gain favour with Brown after he appointed his former press secretary, Ian"
"Labour also criticised Brash's use of the parliamentary leader's fund (also supplied through Parliamentary Services) to pay for his advisor, Bryan Sinclair, alleging he was an election strategist. The Auditor-General investigated publicly funded party advertising for the 2005 election, with a preliminary finding that much of the spending was unlawful being leaked. A final report was released on 12 October 2006. It found that $1.17 million had been improperly spent, as follows: After a draft of the Auditor-General's report was leaked, the National Party repaid the amount that the report said was spent by it unlawfully. Labour strategist Pete Hodgson"
"Sunday Times"", ""The Guardian"" and ""Observer"". Bragg's friends include the former Labour Party leaders Tony Blair, Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot, and former deputy leader Roy Hattersley. He was one of 100 donors who gave the Labour Party a sum in excess of £5,000 in 1997, the year the party came to power under Blair in the general election. The following year he was appointed by Blair to the House of Lords as the life peer Baron Bragg, ""of Wigton in the County of Cumbria"", one of a number of Labour donors given peerages. This led to accusations of cronyism"
"of many major sources of donations. Declining party membership, partially due to the reduction of activists' influence upon policy-making under the reforms of Neil Kinnock and Blair, also contributed to financial problems. Between January and March 2008, the Labour Party received just over £3 million in donations and were £17 million in debt; compared to the Conservatives' £6 million in donations and £12 million in debt. These debts eventually mounted to £24.5 million, and were finally fully repaid in 2015. In the 2010 general election on 6 May that year, Labour with 29.0% of the vote won the second largest"
"political donors list – had contributed £104,000 of the £222,000 donated by Abrahams in the five months since Mr Brown became PM. Mrs Kidd has ""donated"" £185,000 since 2003, and is also listed as a £5,000 donor to Harriet Harman's successful Labour deputy leadership bid in 2007; ""The Mail on Sunday"", which broke the story, investigated the donations after it emerged that builder Ray Ruddick lived in a former council house he had bought for £12,000, and drove a second-hand blue Ford Transit; while Mrs Kidd was a secretary living in Whickham near Gateshead. It also emerged that £167,000 had"
"3 June 2007, the Observer reported that he had donated £1 million to the Labour Party (one of the most generous ever donations to Labour, eclipsed only by a £2m donation from the steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, and a similar sum given by Lord Sainsbury). Mahmoud Khayami Mahmoud Khayami, CBE, KSS, GCFO () born 1930 in Mashhad, Iran, is an Iranian industrialist and philanthropist, of French nationality. Mahmoud Khayami was born in 1930 in Mashhad where he attended elementary and high school. In 1951 he transferred to Tehran and before long he was involved in the automotive industry. Eleven years"
"the UK. He was also named to the Evening Standard’s “Progress 1000” list of “London’s most influential people,” citing his philanthropic contributions and business success. In 2006, at the time of the Cash for Peerages allegations concerning the Labour Party, Hintze voluntarily revealed he was one of the previously anonymous patrons who had made loans to the Conservative Party. In 2011 his known loans and donations to the party totalled around £4 million. In the five months to September 2011 he donated £31,000, enough to grant him membership of the Conservative Treasurers' Group, the second highest rung on the party's"
"a £4,000,000 deal, in exchange his personal diaries, with a publishing firm owned by Rupert Murdoch. On 5 September 2006, a letter signed by 17 Labour MPs called for Tony Blair to resign. On the same day, 49 other Labour MPs signed a statement supporting Blair's departure timetable. The next day ""The Sun"" reported that Blair would step down as Leader of the Labour Party on 31 May 2007, and as Prime Minister when a new leader is elected. That same day, seven of the MPs who signed the letter resigned as Parliamentary Private Secretaries (unpaid and unofficial posts assisting"
"Of this, £714,492 was from membership and subscriptions, £32,115 from fundraising activities and £1,361,640 from donations. By law, individual donations over £7,500 must be reported. UKIP has several high-profile backers. In March 2009, the Conservative Party's biggest-ever donor, Stuart Wheeler, donated £100,000 to UKIP after criticising Cameron's stance towards the Treaty of Lisbon. He was then expelled from the Conservatives and in 2011 appointed treasurer of UKIP. In October 2014, Arron Banks, who previously gave £25,000 to the Conservatives, increased his UKIP donation from £100,000 to £1 million after Hague said he had never heard of him. The multi-millionaire Paul"
"breaching the rules and, to head off a scandal, agreed to repay £25,230. An internal UKIP inquiry was launched after the Parliament became aware of the affair, but no action was taken and the results of the investigation were kept secret. As Daniel Foggo later reported, UKIP's former leader, Roger Knapman, halted the inquiry after it uncovered serious wrongdoing, believing that the European Parliament would clear Wise. Farage told reporter Daniel Foggo that Wise ""had committed a simple, silly error by making himself a ""paying agent"" for his own staff."" On 23 February 2007, party sources at UKIP discovered that"
"Labour decided to nominate Margaret Wilson for the position. Burton sponsored the introduction of the Electoral Finance Act, which made election funding more transparent and open by making anonymous donations illegal if they exceed the sum of $12,000. The Act capped the highest donation to the sum of $120,000 and increased public funding in elections to allow for more funding to go to a wider range of parties. The Act extended the regulated period classifying an election year to 1 January of the election year. In November 2007 Burton resigned from his Cabinet positions during Prime Minister Helen Clark's portfolio"
"June 2007. Although the Nurses’ hardship fund raised £750,000 after some of the Premiership’s best-paid stars pitched in with a day’s pay, the campaign received a ""mixed response"" and was described by some commentators as ""intellectually flawed"" and ""a thinly-veiled form of blackmail."" Gareth Southgate, then the manager of Middlesbrough F.C., cancelled his club's donation after Hertz published a list of footballers who had contributed, ""effectively 'outing' those who had not."" Southgate said: ""I am disgusted with the manner in which this campaign has gone about its fundraising. Mayday for Nurses is a worthy cause, but there are many others."
"one individual, David Abrahams, had made a number of donations to the Labour Party through third parties without the fact that he was ultimate donor being reported. He said that he had not appreciated that he had failed to comply with the reporting requirements. Watt revealed he had known about the arrangement for about a year. In May 2009 the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence for any prosecution relating to these events. From March 2008 to December 2010 Watt was Chief Executive of The Campaign Company, a Croydon based communications consultancy. In January 2010, Watt published the"