Former minister underneath ex-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak donates £5m to Tory battle chest

May 23, 2023 at 3:49 AM

An ex-minister to former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has donated £5m to the Conservatives to assist them combat the subsequent election.

Mohamed Mansour, who served as transport minister underneath the late Mubarak – who was deposed throughout a well-liked revolution – turned the social gathering’s treasurer final December.

Mr Mansour mentioned he had donated the quantity – reported by the Daily Telegraph as the most important the Tories have obtained for greater than 20 years – due to his “confidence” in Rishi Sunak.

Writing within the Telegraph, Mr Mansour mentioned: “I believe that this country has a very capable prime minister. One who understands how growth is generated in the modern economy. He gets the importance of technology and innovation. He can make the modern economy work for all UK citizens.

“My confidence within the prime minister is why I used to be proud to turn out to be a senior treasurer of the Conservative Party final December.

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“I want to give him the best chance of having a full five-year term and so have donated £5m to the party’s election fighting fund. I look at what he has achieved in his first months in office and think what he could do in five years.”

Sky News’ Westminster Accounts project, along side Tortoise Media, collated all the data on donations that’s obtainable by means of Parliament’s register of curiosity for the primary time in a single database, with complete sums and particulars of which MPs are receiving how a lot cash and from whom.

It revealed that Mr Sunak obtained the best variety of donations of any Conservative MP with £546,043 – however he got here behind Labour chief Sir Keir Starmer, who amassed £752,809 given to him by 67 firms and people.

This newest donation to Mr Sunak won’t present up on the Electoral Commission’s register till subsequent month, which means it will not but be obtainable on the Westminster Accounts software.

The improvement shall be a great addition for Mr Sunak, who presided over a punishing set of native elections that noticed the Tories lose more than 1,000 seats.

Despite the outcome, Mr Sunak confidently backed himself to remain prime minister for another term in an interview with Sky political editor Beth Rigby from the G7 summit in Japan.

Asked whether or not he would nonetheless be PM after the subsequent common election, Mr Sunak replied: “Yes. I’m working really hard to deliver for the British people.

“That’s my precedence, that is what I’m occupied with. I’m assured we are able to ship for folks. I do know that issues are powerful proper now, however I feel we now have made good progress within the six months that I’ve been within the job. I’ll simply preserve at it.”

According to Forbes, Mr Mansour oversees family conglomerate Mansour Group, which was founded by his father Loutfy in 1952 and has 60,000 employees.

From 2006 to 2009, Mr Mansour served as Egypt’s minister of transportation underneath Mubarak, who was topped in 2011 as Egypt was caught up in a wave of popular uprisings that became known as the Arab Spring.

Mubarak, recognized by his nickname because the modern-day “pharaoh”, ruled Egypt as an autocrat for three decades from 1981, and was jailed for years after the revolution that ended his rule.

He was given a life sentence for the deaths of anti-government protesters at the heart of the uprising and was convicted in 2015 alongside his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, of embezzling millions of pounds from the state.

Mubarak eventually walked free in 2017 after being acquitted of the majority of the charges against him in a move that shocked Egyptians.

He died on 25 February 2020.