One of the five Tory leadership candidates will be Britain’s Prime Minister in just 53 days.
The final two will be allowed to spend a whopping £300,000 on their campaigns - excluding travel expenses.
This is double the £150,000 limit that was imposed on millionaires Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt during the last contest in 2019.
But by the time we know who’s funded their tilts for 10 Downing Street, it will be too late.
Under current rules, MPs must declare any donations they’ve received of more than £1,500 - including for leadership bids.
But they have up to 28 days to do it - and after that, donations can take up to another two and a half weeks to be published.
Between now and the new leader being picked on September 5, there will be only one more update to the Commons register of interests - probably in late August.
Because of this, we’re likely to know very little about who’s funding the leadership campaigners until one of them is already in 10 Downing Street. This is legal, but campaigners believe it is a problem.
Tom Brake, director of Unlock Democracy, told the Mirror: “With all the Conservative candidates committed to reinstating honesty, integrity and transparency at the heart of Government, they should start with declaring immediately who is donating to their leadership campaigns.
"They are vying to be Prime Minister, not just the leader of the Conservative Party.
“So it is not just Conservative MPs, but also Conservative party members and indeed the wider public who are entitled to know who is supporting them financially.
“Revealing who is backing them with hard cash now will give everyone a clearer picture of what policies and values they are likely to champion, before they are elected PM.”
What we can tell you is what we know so far about money swirling around the candidates.
They aren’t, of course, for leadership bids - which weren’t declared at the time. But this is what’s available so far...
Penny Mordaunt
The frontrunner received £10,000 from First Corporate Consultants in January 2021. A director is Terence Mordaunt, who is part of the highly controversial Global Warming Policy Foundation.
The think tank argues climate change policies “may be doing more harm than good”. Mr Mordaunt has previously been quoted as saying: “No one has proved yet that CO2 is the culprit (of climate change). It may not be.”
Another donor, giving £3,000 in January 2020, was Sir Michael Hintze - a hedge fund boss worth £1.7bn.
He has been part of the Leader’s Group of top donors who can have private dinners with the Prime Minister. Cabinet ministers lorded it up at his £3m birthday party at Blenheim Palace in 2013, at the height of austerity.
He’s not listed as a donor, but Ms Mordaunt is said to have arrived at the Hay literary festival in a helicopter with multi-millionaire PR guru Chris Lewis, who co-authored a political book with her.
Liz Truss
She has not declared any donations in the last couple of years.
If she’s started receiving them now but only has to declare them later, it will be a perfect example of how opaque the system is.
Her campaign is registered to a sumptuous Westminster townhouse that has been offered up to Tory MPs for several leadership contests - including Boris Johnson’s in 2019.
The five-bedroom 18th Century property in Lord North Street was legally owned by Lord Greville Howard’s firm Jardentome Ltd when we last wrote about it in 2017.
The Tory was handed a peerage in 2004, shortly after employing Iain Duncan Smith as a paid consultant and allowing a Westminster home to be used as headquarters for the MP’s bid for the top job.
Before that, reports claimed the listed home was offered up to Michael Portillo as he plotted his 1995 leadership challenge - famously aborted when phone lines were spotted being installed.
Lord Howard was quoted saying of the saga in 2001: "He let us install the lines. But in the event the house wasn't used, and we had to put it back in order."
Rishi Sunak
It's well documented that the former Chancellor - whose resignation delivered a hammer blow to Boris Johnson and was followed by a huge exodus that brought the PM down - is a very rich man.
But his aides said he is not believed to be funding his run for Number 10 from his family's estimated £730 million fortune, Business Insider reports.
Campaign insiders say he's been accepting donations, but there's been very little declared so far.
What we do know is that in November 2021 Mr Sunak received a £50,000 donation from Dean R Benson, who founded e-commerce firm Visualsoft in Teesside.
Last year The Spectator suggested that the Tory cabinet member was one of several putting funds together in case a leadership race was called.
Kemi Badenoch
She received £1,000 ticket to a donor ball in November 2021 from billionaire hedge funder Sir Michael Hintze (see above).
Tory MPs had to duck out of the Black and White Party, where super-rich donors paid up to £15,000 per table, to vote on Boris Johnson’s care costs U-turn that will cost poorer pensioners £900m a year.
Ms Badenoch also received legal research and advice on online abuse worth over £26,000 from Jeremy Hildreth.
Dubbed a 'mad professor' and ‘The Indiana Jones’ of branding, he is credited with the marketing of Jura whisky.
Rather than being linked to a leadership pitch, though, a source close to the minister has previously said it “related to threats and abuse the Minister and her family have received”.
Tom Tugendhat
Mr Tugendhat has proved popular with donors in the past three years, amassing £132,000 since June 2019 - although none of this appears to be with a leadership bid in mind.
Between January 2020 and August 2021 David John Coldman handed over £85,000 in four separate donations.
Of this, £65,000 was allocated to pay for an extra member of staff to support Mr Tugendhat's work as Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, official documents show.
His most recent declared donation, in April this year, was of £10,000 from InvestUK, and was also to pay for an additional staff member.
In the same month Mr Tugendhat received £25,000 from Lord Spencer of Alresford - a former Tory party treasurer - for the same purpose.
