A group of parliamentarians from Britain will meet on Monday (22) to decide whether to launch a formal investigation into the collapse of supply chain financier Greensill.
The meeting comes amid allegations that former Prime Minister David Cameron personally lobbied the government on his behalf, he said. The telegraph.
The Treasury Selection Committee is expected to discuss the prospect as requests for an investigation into Cameron’s alleged efforts to secure access to emergency coronavirus loans for the company grow, the report added.
Greensill collapsed this month after an insurer took cover off some of its products, leaving Britain’s third largest steel producer, GFG Alliance, its main customer, struggling to secure new financing.
Cameron was hired as an adviser to the company in 2018, two years after leaving Downing Street, following the Brexit vote. Greensill founder Lex Greensill was named CBE in honor of the Queen’s birthday in 2017 for his 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’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility from England to large companies.
Greensill himself had ten meetings with senior Treasury officials between March and June last year, the newspaper added.
According The Sunday Times, Cameron sent ‘multiple texts’ to Rishi Sunak’s private phone number on it.
Greensill was approved as a lender under the Coronavirus Major Business Interruption Loan Scheme in June 2020, reportedly advancing hundreds of millions in state-supported loans to Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG and associated companies.
“I think it is in the public interest that we have full transparency about what happened, not least because there are many jobs in the sector. There are many questions to be asked, ”said Dame Angela Eagle, Labor MP for Wallasey and a member of the Treasury Selection Committee. The telegraph.
Christine Jardine, a spokesman for the Liberal Democratic Treasury, said reports that the former prime minister was lobbying directly against the chancellor on behalf of a financial firm he was advising are deeply worrying.
“This is public money and the processes involved in making decisions must be completely transparent and blameless. We need a full and thorough investigation into what happened here, ”said shadow labor chancellor Anneliese Dodds. The telegraph.
Greensill’s funding helped GFG to grow rapidly following the purchase of the Newport steelworks in South Wales in 2013.
The group later purchased Lochaber aluminum smelter, Whyalla steelmaker in Australia, Georgetown steelmaker in South Carolina and Rio Tinto’s Dunkerque smelter, among others, to develop a $ 10 billion revenue empire with 35,000 employees