One of the remaining mysteries over Adam Werritty was the identity of the final donor to Pargav. This morning’s Times said the accounts only identified “Barclays PR” (contributing £30,000) as the donor. Barclays Bank said it was not the source, indicating that the money came through the private account of a Barclays customer.
Mick Davis, chief executive of Xstrata, the FTSE 100 mining company, is a close friend of both Michael Lewis and Poju Zabludowicz, two donors whose identities had already been made public. (Zabludowicz chairs Bicom, the pro-Israel lobbying group, and Lewis was deputy chair of Bicom a few years ago.) The South Africa-born executive is head of the United Jewish Israeli Appeal, a charitable body in the UK.
Sir Gus’s report reveals that the sixth donor is one “Mr Michael Davis“. And I can confirm that it is one and the same. Mick Davis donated in a personal capacity and supports a number of “political and charitable causes”, I’m told.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey