- Tuesday, April 30, 2024
By: Pramod Thomas
A group of MPs in Britain will meet on Monday (22) to decide whether to launch a formal inquiry into the collapse of supply chain financier Greensill.
The meeting happens amid claims that former prime minister David Cameron personally lobbied the government on its behalf, reported The Telegraph.
The Treasury Select Committee is expected to discuss the prospect as calls grow for an investigation into Cameron’s alleged efforts to secure access to emergency coronavirus lending for the company, the report added.
Greensill collapsed into insolvency this month after an insurer pulled coverage on some of its products, leaving Britain’s third biggest steel producer GFG Alliance, its main customer, scrambling to secure new finance.
Cameron was hired as an adviser to the firm in 2018, two years after he left Downing Street in the wake of the Brexit vote. Greensill’s founder, Lex Greensill, was made CBE in the Queen’s birthday honours in 2017 for services to the economy.
Last week, the Financial Times reported claims that Cameron used his personal email and at least one phone-call to lobby the Treasury and 10 Downing Street last May to try to help Greensill access the Bank of England’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility for large firms.
Greensill itself had 10 meetings with senior Treasury officials between March and June last year, the newspaper added.
According to The Sunday Times, Cameron sent ‘multiple texts’ to Rishi Sunak’s private phone number regarding the same.
Greensill was approved as a lender under the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme in June 2020, reportedly advancing hundreds of millions in state-backed loans to Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG and linked companies.
“I think it’s in the public interest that we have total transparency about what went on, not least as there are a lot of jobs in the industry. There are lots of questions to ask,” Dame Angela Eagle, Labour MP for Wallasey and member of the Treasury Select Committee, told The Telegraph.
Christine Jardine, treasury spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, has said reports that the former prime minister was directly lobbying the Chancellor on behalf of a finance company he was advising are deeply concerning.
“This is public money, and the processes involved in decision-making should be fully transparent and beyond reproach. We need a full and thorough investigation into what’s happened here,” Labour shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds told The Telegraph.
Financing from Greensill has helped GFG as it grew rapidly after buying the Newport steelworks in South Wales in 2013.
Later, the group bought the Lochaber aluminium smelter, Whyalla steelworks in Australia, the Georgetown steelworks in South Carolina and Rio Tinto’s Dunkerque smelter, among others to develop an $10 billion revenue empire with 35,000 employees
