Nineteen people working for the biggest donor to the Conservative Party have been arrested in France in connection with a multi-million pounds tax and money laundering scandal.
All are linked to Lycamobile, the multinational telecoms giant, which has given at least £2.2m to Prime Minister David Cameron’s party since 2011, including half-a-million last year alone.
Lycamobile also allowed Boris Johnson to use one of their call centres during his successful 2012 campaign to become Mayor of London.
Those arrested include Lycamobile director, Alain Jochimek, who is well known as a prominent Jewish community leader in France, where he runs B’nai B’rith, the pro-Israel service organisation.
B’nai B’rith’s British branch was highly critical of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as he dealt with an anti-Semitism crisis in his party last month.
Mr Jochimek appeared in a Paris criminal court on Friday, along with nine others who have been charged with a variety of offences related to financial fraud.
They specifically relate to alleged illicit transactions of 13 million pounds, but the French authorities believe the figure could be far higher.
It follows a an investigation by BuzzFeed that caught Lycamobile ‘employing three cash couriers to drop rucksacks stuffed with hundreds of thousands of pounds twice a day at Post Offices scattered across London,’ according to the news site.
Bundles of cash were seized in raids on Lycamobile’s Paris headquarters, and a series of residential and business addresses across the city, while the company’ s French bank accounts have since been frozen.
Lycamobile’s Sri Lankan-born owner, Subaskaran Allirajah, is a member of the exclusive Leader’s Group for top Tory donors.
He has dined with Mr Cameron or members of his cabinet twice in the past six months, and is also close to Mr Johnson, after bankrolling his campaign.
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