Sunak's wife business dealings with Russia

GagaJo

It's hypocrisy. How can someone both condemn a country for horrific war crimes and also make money from them?
Although I'm sadly aware that means less than nothing to most Tories.

Read volver's posts. SHE needs to do something about it, not her husband. For all we know – for all he knows – she is doing as we speak.

He isn’t making money from this company, his wife is - or was. We don’t have post-invasion information do we?

Your last paragraph is sickening GagaJo.

So if your husband was a builder and the school was taking tenders for a new classroom and he was one of the applicants you wouldnt declare an interest.

Please don't associate me with any suggestion that Rishi Sunak has no responsibility in any of this.

If his wife is making money from Russia, he needs to work with her to sort it out. We used to have politicians with integrity, that doesn't seem to be important any more. He doesn't get to plead ignorance or disinterest.

Galaxy

So if your husband was a builder and the school was taking tenders for a new classroom and he was one of the applicants you wouldnt declare an interest.

I would abstain from any involvement in that decision-making process and mention the reason why. I would not volunteer any information about the business.

You are declaring an interest then!

With all due respect to those GNs who are school governors, your partner having a financial interest in a company from a country currently waging illegal war on another, and committing war crimes, is a slightly different scale to building classrooms. Especially if you are a senior politician

"If"

We don't actually know the current situation. Perhaps a bit of wait and see? You never know, MrsSunak might even speak for herself.

Galaxy

You are declaring an interest then!

OK but that has never arisen and there would be no need to mention it before it was a potential problem.

Yes I agree. Although you wouldnt believe how heated the new classroom debate can get . It is about integrity in public life however big or small the issue is.

I have several,questions.

1. Does Mrs. Sunak have a majority share holding in the Indian Company which is trading with Russia?

2. Is she able to have any influence in changing its trading ethos, as it is not illegal to trade with Russia in India.

3. Is she going to divest herself of her shares and/or donate any profits since the illegal invasion to a Ukrainian Charity.

I am not responsible for my husbands investments, he is definitely not responsible for mine.

As his wife’s wealth is known, he must have declared it.

Good points, GG. I was just wondering about whether the nature of Mrs.S's business interests in Russia would make a difference. What, for example, if it's supplying medical care to very sick babies?

I am now buggering off to make a cake.

Its not about his wife's wealth though is it?

Its about the fact that a senior politician has been evasive about whether his wife has an interest in a company with a financial interest in Russia.

He could have said that they were investigating whether the company his wife has an interest in does in fact have an interest in Russia and they will be taking appropriate action. But no, we learnt they have all sorts of bread in his house.

None of our politicians seem to have any understanding of how their behaviour could be interpreted, with respect to interests in Russia, the price of bread or whether they went to a party.

Are you making the cake Baggs on advice from Rishi Antoinette?

GrannyGravy13

I have several,questions.

1. Does Mrs. Sunak have a majority share holding in the Indian Company which is trading with Russia?

2. Is she able to have any influence in changing its trading ethos, as it is not illegal to trade with Russia in India.

3. Is she going to divest herself of her shares and/or donate any profits since the illegal invasion to a Ukrainian Charity.

I am not responsible for my husbands investments, he is definitely not responsible for mine.

As his wife’s wealth is known, he must have declared it.

Can't answer all your questions, GG13 but, as I understand it, she doesn't have a majority shareholding. But it is a family business and the family holds the majority (if not 'all') the shares.

As it's a family business one would assume that she has an opportunity to comment on its trading ethos. Personally I doubt this would be in slightest bit influential as her father is a friend of Putin, and is Indian, India has taken a different view of the invasion of Ukraine from that of GB, i.e is supportive of Putin.

As his wife’s wealth is known, he must have declared it.

Once again, not positive about this but I understand that he hasn't declared it.

I realise that husbands and wives are under no obligation to take an interest in their spouse's investments, but as Sunak is Chancellor of a country which is sanctioning Putin's Russia and is supporting Ukraine it is not a good look for his wife to be earning from investment in Russia.

But, it's the sort of behaviour one expects from members of this tory government...

This is an Indian Company (as far as I know) registered in India.

India has not sanctioned Russia and trade continues freely between the two companies.

Until the post invasion accounts are made public we will not know if Mrs. Sunak took dividends/salary during that time.

Unless Mrs.Sunak has a controlling interest she will/can be out voted by other share holders on whether or not to continue to trade with Russia.

Her opinions are to sell all her interest, which under the circumstances will probably not be an easy option or keep them and donate any profit to Ukrainian Charities.

I missed breadgate but we have at least two different styles of bread per week (DH best of both and a multi-seed for me) and when DD and boys are here it’s three, nothing unusual about that.

MaizieD points of my last post have crossed with yours, (I am slow at typing today)

The squirming and the apologists are breath-taking.

After two minutes of googling I found out that the company is Infosys, which is a tech company, and is owned by her father. So probably no baby food or medical supplies. But they do say that they have no current links with Russia and are donating to Ukraine.

Can Sunak not just have a bit of common sense and say they are working it out? Not just say that its nothing to do with him?

No squirming or apologising from me volver I just like to know the facts before sending someone to the metaphorical gallows of GN.

So if your second paragraph is true volver regarding links with Russia, then this is just another mythological storm in a GN teacup

So you could have spent 2 minutes on google.

And so could Rishi.

The company may be registered and based company in India but she is living in the UK and the government her husband works for has made a this decision to put sanctions on dealing with Russia surely this wrong. Why could she not suspend her involvement with the company in the short term even if it was seen as a just a gesture it would be something at least .

GrannyGravy13

So if your second paragraph is true volver regarding links with Russia, then this is just another ^mythological storm in a GN teacup^

No its not GG13, because the story is not that Mrs Sunak made money, but that Mr Sunak was trying to say that he didn't know, and it didn't matter that he didn't know, that one of the companies his wife has an interest in might be benefitting from Russian links.

Mr Sunak, who has a senior role in a government that is telling people that they shouldn't have links to Russian companies. ??‍♀️

Although this thread is about Russian investments it’s worth pointing out that, in November 2020, the Guardian wrote about Akshata Murty’s investment arrangements, funnelling money through the tax haven of Mauritius to deprive India of tax revenues which could be used to build schools and hospitals and alleviate child poverty.

These findings emerged from an investigation by the newspaper into a range of financial assets held by Sunak and his close family, which had not been declared in the official register of ministers’ interests.

To say Sunak isn’t responsible for his wife’s actions may be true but let’s not kid ourselves that having a Chancellor who knows his wife is using legal loopholes to avoid paying taxes in a country where an estimated 100 million people live in poverty says little for his integrity or to think that he cares a jot about the poor in India or the UK.

How does Sunak square the increase in his family's personal wealth through tax avoidance in India with the £100M of UK taxpayers' money sends to that country each year in foreign aid?

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/30/rishi-sunak-wife-akshata-murty-imm-mauritius-india-tax

Will Hutton is spot on when he writes in today’s paper:

We are governed by uncreative over-claimers obsessed by Thatcherite shibboleths – hating Europe, fetishising tax cuts and “fiscal responsibility” and wilfully careless of the condition of the people. Sunak’s disastrous spring budget was a seismic event, but he was only making choices faithful to the conceit that the Tories’ priorities and values are those of the country.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/27/for-brazen-cynicism-i-have-seen-nothing-like-sunaks-plan-in-40-years

Sunak's wife has a 0.9% share in Infosys. There might be little she can do about this. She might be offing the share or donating the profits. We don't know.

Sunak could have said, "I'm not my wife's keeper, but we are both committed to honesty and fairness in all our dealings and I assure you we will look into this and do the right thing." He didn't. He squirmed and avoided the issue in a brute faced way. He made the problem worse for himself.

In my opinion the trouble is that the Conservatives have a long trail of failure to deal with corruption, lies, contracts for mates and failures. The Russian Report was buried. Our policies are made by billionaires and millionaires who vote to remove free school dinners and budgets are put in place which don't bear scrutiny or benefit the people they were designed to help.

This general experience is that when the rules are broken nobody is held to task, improvements aren't made and the perpetrators continue to thrive whilst the poor get poorer. This has led many, me included I admit, to expect the worst of some Conservative MPs. If they dealt better with their own mistakes and appeared to learn from them then perhaps we would feel more able to trust them.

If they learned to act with honour and decency and communicate in a straightforward and honest manner then we wouldn't always feel we are being lied to, played or treated like fools.

It would be easy for them to unite the country, to be absolutely decent and to improve things for all - but they don't.

Last week I watched the address President Zelensky made to Ukraine upon his appointment. His skill, decency, passion to make things better for all his people and to unite them for the greater good made me weep. If only we could have such leaders.