Tuesday, 5 June 2012

Lib Dems court tax avoidance specialists for donations

Bustin some moves at the Ministry
Yesterday we did some analysis of Labour and the Conservatives' donations and loans, now it's the turn of the Lib Dems.

Despite the terminal decline of the Lib Dems, they still managed to attract over £4.4m in donations.  The Lib Dems are the least indebted of the three old parties with a mere £1.5m of debts.

Lender TypeAmountPercent
Bank£1,137,00076.9%
Person£310,61521%
Company£15,0001%
Lobbyist£15,0001%

Most of the Lib Dems' debts is owed to banks but they do have a £15k loan from the taxpayer-funded World Bank-backed global warming lobbyists, Yeovil Climate Investment Fund.  The company that loaned them £15k is Smith & Williamson Investment Management, an investment management company that specialises in tax avoidance which the Lib Dems rank just above drowning puppies on its evilness scale.

Here is a breakdown of the Lib Dems' donations from the 2011/12 financial year:

Lender TypeAmountPercent
Person£1,364,28630.9%
Company£1,107,96525.1%
Party Association£1,096,97024.8%
Taxpayer£505,14811.4%
Branch£304,6286.9%
Lobbyist£30,2130.7%
Trust£10,0000.2%

It seems the Lib Dems are even better than the Tories at running commercial operations to top up their funds - they received almost £1.1m in donations from commercial activities, almost a quarter of their income.  They also received over half a million from taxpayer.

Branches donated over £300k and left wing lobbyists Joseph Rowntree Trust (a "charity") donated over £30k.  Huntingdon Trust donated £10k - there is no information available about this trust so we have been unable to determine whether it is just another commercial operation like all the other trusts that have donated money to the Lib Dems during this period.

Tory donor Sir Pervez Anwar has been hedging his bets, donating £5,000 to the Lib Dems through his company, Bestway.  The Ministry of Sound has been extremely generous, making 25 donations totalling almost £366k in 12 months.  Almost every other company that donated money to the Lib Dems are accountants and investment management companies specialising in tax avoidance.