Skip to main content

UK Opposition Raises Questions Over Akshata Murty's Liquidated Firm

The UK's Opposition Labour Party has got into campaigning mode for an expected general election later this year, with advertisements claiming British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is giving the British public a “raw deal” and also raising questions over his wife Akshata Murty's recently liquidated investment venture, Labour's national campaign coordinator and shadow minister, Pat MacFadden, posted a letter on social media dated January 4 that he wrote to UK Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden questioning the circumstances surrounding Ms Murty's Catamaran Ventures being wound up.

The 43-year-old Indian businesswoman and daughter of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy had incorporated the venture in 2013 with her husband as one of the directors before he resigned in 2015. It had emerged in a financial statement last year that she had decided to wind down her firm as a going concern.

“In the past few months, numerous reports about the business dealings of Catamaran Ventures have circulated,” reads MacFadden's letter on X. “It was revealed that the firm run by the Prime Minister's wife received GBP 2m through government Covid support schemes devised by Rishi Sunak himself. It then emerged businesses in which Ms Murty had invested went bust, costing taxpayers GBP 1m… Colleagues and I have written numerous correspondence to government ministers and bodies. Alongside the outstanding questions, the decision by Ms Murty to liquidate her company raises several others that I believe need to be clarified in the public interest,” it notes.

The letter goes on to question the impact the closure of Catamaran Ventures could have on government-backed education start-up Study Halls that it had shares in and any other companies it retained a stake in. It also questions the arrangements in place for the payment of tax owed to the HMRC, the UK tax department, and whether Catamaran Ventures would be “fulfilling all its liabilities to the British taxpayer?” A spokesperson for Murty confirmed to the British media that the Catamaran Ventures UK business was wound up by Murty on December 21, 2023. “As a result, a significant donation has been made to ShareGift, an independent UK-registered charity with experience accepting donations in the form of shares. Ms Murty has shortlisted several charities focused on veterans' affairs and education for the ShareGift team to consider at the time of disbursement,” the spokesperson said.

The personal finances of Mr Sunak and his wife have previously also been under scrutiny when it was revealed that Murty had legal non-domicile tax status, which meant she did not have to pay UK tax on her Indian income. However, after an Opposition furore over this issue, she had relinquished her non-dom tax status and said she would pay all her tax in the UK to prevent the issue becoming a distraction for her husband's political career.

“My decision to pay UK tax on all my worldwide income will not change the fact that India remains the country of my birth, citizenship, parents' home and place of domicile. But I love the UK too,” Ms Murty had said in a statement at the time in April 2022.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)



from NDTV News-World-news https://ift.tt/3phZb7d

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Muhammad Now The Most Popular Name For A Baby In Great Britain, Data Shows

427 years after William Shakespeare wrote it for the first time in the great "tragedy" Romeo & Juliet, England is asking the quintessential question - "What's in a name?" - And this time wondering what significance that question might hold in another 42.7 years. The Department of Statistics in the United Kingdom has revealed in its latest dataset that Muhammad is officially the most popular name for a newborn boy in England and Wales. More than 4,600 babies were registered with that name in 2023 - the highest for a boy. Muhammad was the second-most popular name in 2022 as well. Noah, once the most popular name in UK, came a distant second this year, according to the Office for National Statistics or ONS. But the staff at Great Britain's statistical office has in-fact been observing the trend for a while now. Jotting down the most popular names in the UK, besides other important statistics, it revealed that Muhammad has been among the top 10 names for...
Post a Comment
Read more

US Issues $25-Million Bounty On Venezuela President On Day Of His Oath

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose nearly 12 years in office have been marked by deep economic and social crisis, was sworn in for a third term on Friday, despite a six-month-long election dispute, international calls for him to stand aside and an increase in the US reward offered for his capture. Maduro, president since 2013, was declared the winner of July's election by both Venezuela's electoral authority and top court, though detailed tallies confirming his victory have never been published. Venezuela's opposition says ballot box-level tallies show a landslide win for its former candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who is recognized as president-elect by several countries including the United States. International election observers said the vote was not democratic. The months since the election have seen Gonzalez's flight to Spain in September, his ally Maria Corina Machado going into hiding in Venezuela, and the detentions of high-profile opposition figures and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's Official, Kamala Harris Is Democratic Candidate For US Election

US Vice President Kamala Harris effectively secured the Democratic party's presidential nomination Friday, confirming her remarkable rise to party standard bearer in November's showdown against Republican Donald Trump. Kamala Harris was the sole candidate on the ballot for a five-day electronic vote of nearly 4,000 party convention delegates. She will be officially crowned at a Chicago convention later this month. "I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States," Kamala Harris, 59, said on a phone-in to a party celebration after securing enough votes by the second day of the marathon vote. In the two weeks since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, Kamala Harris has gained full control of the party. No other Democrats stepped forward to challenge her elevation to the top of the ticket, making her confirmation as the first Black and South Asian woman ever to secure a major party's nomination a formality. The a...
Post a Comment
Read more