Democracy Ltd: How Money and Donations Corrupted British Politics by Bobby Friedman

Author:Bobby Friedman [Friedman, Bobby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Parties, Political Science, Political Process
ISBN: 9781780742526
Google: BZXwwAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 21318882
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2013-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

‌8

‌In Bad Company

How the Lib Dems were funded by a fraudster and the murky world of corporate donations

‘You should check him out before you take ‌any more of his money’1

Reg Clark, former treasurer of the Liberal Democrats

It was just how he liked it. The beaches were white and the golf courses a luscious green. In Punta Cana on the eastern side of the Dominican Republic, the Liberal Democrats’ largest-ever private donor lived in a gated community. Although he kept a collection of 4x4s, Darren Patrick Nally could often be seen out in the sun walking his dog, Charles, named after the former Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy.

But not everything was as it might have seemed. Nally’s real name was Michael Brown, and, although this was a tropical paradise, for Brown – fraudster, trickster and Liberal Democrat benefactor – it was the place where his past would finally catch up with him. After three years on the run, at last, in January 2012, the Caribbean police were able to cuff their man and begin the process of sending him back to the UK – where a seven-year prison sentence awaited him.

It was a long way from Brown’s exalted position in the world of finance – and in British politics. Just a few years earlier he had been one of the most important figures in the Lib Dems: the man who bankrolled the party and who had Kennedy’s ear. In a two-month period, Brown used his company, 5th Avenue Partners, to donate nearly £2.5 million and he was thought to be key to the party’s financial future. Soon, the edifice of lies would come tumbling down, causing untold embarrassment for the party and highlighting fundamental flaws in the system of donations, flaws that continue to blight British politics.

It had started in November 2004 when Brown approached the Liberal Democrats, effectively out of the blue, with an offer to make a huge donation. Astonishingly, he simply walked into the party’s headquarters in Cowley Street to proffer them money. This was not how things normally worked – as the Labour fundraiser Jonathan Mendelsohn told me, ‘You do get people phoning up the switchboard and saying, “Hello, I’d like to give some money”, [but] it rarely turns into a substantial sum.’ Any serious giver was likely to have been on the radar for some time – to have been introduced to the party treasurer by a mutual contact, or at least to have had a series of conversations over time when money was coaxed out of him or her.

At first sight, there was much to commend Brown – he seemed to be a highly successful financier with links to members of the royal family and an impeccable education at Gordonstoun public school and St Andrews University. 5th Avenue Partners had attracted a host of respected investors, including the former Chairman of Manchester United, Martin Edwards. He was undeniably brash, short-tempered and sported a pony tail – or, as his former PR representative Ronel Lehman told

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.