A major Conservative donor has been accused of using bullying legal threats to suppress a report by the veteran Labour MP Margaret Hodge, which alleged he was “mired in an international corruption scandal”.
Speaking in the House of Commons on Thursday, the former Tory cabinet minister David Davis accused Mohamed Amersi of having “effectively silenced” Hodge, chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on anti-corruption and responsible tax.
The Tory donor, who funded Boris Johnson’s campaign to become prime minister, is suing the BBC and unsuccessfully sued former Tory MP Charlotte Leslie.
Amersi called the comments “grossly erroneous and misleading”.
Losing Our Moral Compass, a report written by the chair of the APPG on anti-corruption and responsible tax about corrupt money and politics, was published last year by King’s College London (KCL), where Hodge is a visiting professor.
Davis told MPs it was withdrawn after Amersi, through his lawyers, Carter-Ruck, claimed that two sections about him were highly defamatory, reserving the right to sue.
The former cabinet minister read out the excerpts about Amersi from the report, which Hodge said she intended to republish in full, relying on privilege (a defence to defamation, which reports of parliamentary proceedings attract).
The relevant sections included details of a 2021 joint investigation by the Guardian and BBC based on the Pandora papers leak, which described how Amersi advised on the structure of a deal that was later found to be a $220m (£162m) bribe for the daughter of the then president of Uzbekistan.
Quoting Hodge’s report, Davis said the leak brought to light how Amersi “allegedly used [British Virgin Islands]-based companies to profit from apparently corrupt deals between a Swedish telecoms giant and a key power broker in the kleptocratic regime in Uzbekistan”.
The second section Davis read out said comments by Amersi – also previously reported – “seems [sic] to confirm that political donations can have a sinister purpose, after he described his frustrations at what he called ‘access capitalism’”.
Amersi previously admitted to buying access to Prince Charles and has donated £750,000 (including his wife’s contributions) to the Conservative party since 2017. He claims to have paid £250,000 to become a member of the party’s “advisory board which has regular meetings with Boris Johnson and leading cabinet members”.
Davis said KCL should have stood up to Amersi but was “bullied” with the threat of legal action, unfamiliar to universities. Amersi is suing the BBC and Davis claimed he had also threatened to sue other publications.
Davis told MPs: “His attempts to remove important information from public view are a textbook example of strategic litigation against public participation (Slapps). They’re clearly an exercise in lawfare.
“This is done in the knowledge that lengthy legal battles will likely bankrupt politicians, journalists, academic institutions, whistleblowers and others who are brave enough to tell the truth about public corruption.”
In response to the Pandora papers investigation, Amersi’s lawyers previously told the Guardian that any suggestion he “knowingly” facilitated corrupt payments was false. They added that Amersi had relied on the fact that others had done due diligence on the arrangement, that he had “no reason” to believe it might be a bribe, and that he had only worked on the project for six weeks.
In a statement, Amersi said: “Both parliamentarians were, in a constructive and non-hostile tone, invited to correct their factual narratives and inspect all underlying documents but chose not to do. The same appalling conduct was followed by some journalists covering the story. At no time was litigation threatened nor were articles required to be taken down; simply the erroneous facts to be corrected. I would once again urge these parliamentarians to stop being cowards and confront me with any evidence they have.”
A spokesperson for KCL’s Policy Institute said: “We welcome the publication of this report and the issues it raises being debated.”
