A senior cabinet minister pocketed £13,000 from a hedge fund and art dealers for "strategic advice" in the month before he was re-hired by Rishi Sunak.
Oliver Dowden resigned from Boris Johnson's cabinet - where he was minister without portfolio and chairman of the Conservative Party.
In September, he took up roles with Heni Limited - an "art services" business, and Caxton Associates, a hedge fund run by a donor who has handed almost £4m to the party - where he was raked in a combined £13,300 in just a month for his "strategy" and "policy" advice.
Ministers have to wait three months after leaving government before taking lucrative advisory roles in the private sector.
Mr Dowden accepted both jobs on September 24, three months to the day after his resignation.
Between the two jobs he performed between 20 and 22 hours of work - for which he trousered around £1,200 an hour.
But he gave up both roles after a month, when he was tapped by Rishi Sunak to return to the Cabinet Office as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Despite serving as Culture Secretary as recently as last September, Parliament’s revolving door watchdog placed minimal restrictions on Mr Dowden upon accepting the role.
He was banned from lobbying the government on behalf of Heni, or providing them with advice on government contract bids for two years.
Mr Dowden told watchdog Acoba that he had not met with anyone from Heni while serving in government.
And he said the role would not “involve acting as a paid advocate in any proceeding of the House of Commons, including initiating and participating in proceedings relating to ministers or public officials.”
Embarrassingly, the watchdog said his former department had told them Mr Dowden had “made no significant regulatory or policy decisions related to the arts sector” during his time in post.
But a Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport source said this was an error, and the document should refer to the "art market", rather than the "arts sector".
Mr Dowden was placed under similarly minimal restrictions for his job advising Caxton Associates.
Caxton’s CEO, Andrew Law, is a major Conservative Party donor. In recent years he’s helped to organise the party’s infamous Black and White Ball fundraiser and personally handed the party almost £4m in cash and gifts since 2004.
Labour have vowed to ban MPs from taking second jobs, with limited exceptions for public service roles and for MPs who do a modest amount of work to keep up professional accreditation.
In September, Ministers accepted a recommendation that MPs should be banned from giving paid parliamentary advice, consultancy or strategy.
But they refused to back the Standards Committee’s plea for a lobbying ban to be written into MPs’ contracts.
Both of Mr Dowden’s former roles were properly declared on the register of members interests, and there’s no suggestion of any wrongdoing.
