Mohamed Amersi
 Mohamed Amersi    (lawyer, businessman) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 20 April 1960 |
| Founder of | Conservative Friends of the Middle East and North Africa |
Former barrister and solicitor Mohamed Amersi is a British businessman who founded and chairs the Inclusive Ventures Group. He is chairman of QML Group.
On 3 October 2021, Mohamed Amersi was revealed in the Pandora Papers to have been involved in a controversial $220m payment to a secretive offshore company in 2010, described as "one of the biggest corruption scandals that we have seen in Sweden in modern times."[1]
Contents
Pandora Papers
According to The Guardian:
A major Conservative party donor who funded Boris Johnson’s campaign to become prime minister advised on the structure of a deal that was later found to be a $220m (£162m) bribe for the daughter of the then president of Uzbekistan.
Documents show how Mohamed Amersi advised a Swedish multinational telecoms company on a complex transaction that it later accepted was a “corrupt payment” to the influential first daughter of Uzbekistan’s authoritarian ruler, Islam Karimov.
Responding to the allegations, Amersi’s lawyers said any suggestion he “knowingly” facilitated corrupt payments was false and that the underlying arrangements for the deal had been put in place two years before. They added that Amersi had relied on the fact that others had done due diligence on the arrangement, that he had “no reason” to believe it might be a bribe, and that he had only worked on the project for six weeks.
A joint investigation by The Guardian and BBC Panorama, however, raises wider questions about the work Amersi did for the telecoms firm, Telia, over a six-year period as it sought to secure lucrative business across the central Asia region.
An international dealmaker in the telecoms industry, Mohamed Amersi was paid about $65m for his work over that period – funds which, the Pandora Papers suggest, contributed to a significant fortune, spent in part on luxury properties in the UK.[2]
Political activity
Mohamed Amersi is a Conservative Party donor. He donated £10,000 each to Boris Johnson and Michael Gove during the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election.[3]
According to Tom Burgis of the Financial Times:
Mohamed Amersi is a longstanding client of Quintessentially, the “concierge” service that co-Chairman of the Conservative Party Ben Elliot co-owns. After Amersi became a top-tier Quintessentially client, Ben Elliot arranged for him to travel to a royal retreat in Scotland to dine with the heir to the throne Prince Charles, whose wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, is Elliot’s aunt. Ben Elliot solicited Tory donations from Amersi and his Russian partner Nadezhda Rodicheva even before he was party co-chair, Amersi said. The couple have given £750,000 since 2017. Amersi belongs to the Leaders Group of donors who meet over lunch monthly with ministers.[4]
COMENA
Mohamed Amersi is the sole named shareholder[5] of a group called the Conservative Friends of the Middle East and North Africa (COMENA).[6] A decision on whether the Conservative Party gives COMENA full affiliation is expected in September 2021.[7]
Philanthropy
Also a philanthropist, Mohamed Amersi is founder and chairman of the Amersi Foundation, which has made contributions across a range of issues, including multi-faith and youth programmes to the arts and heritage, education, anti-slavery, climate change, technology and poverty reduction. He also holds a number of chairmanship and advisory roles in the charity sector.[8]
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:A bitter Middle East crisis at the heart of the Conservative Party | Article | 6 August 2021 | Peter Oborne | This crisis will not - thank goodness - claim lives as the Iraq War did. But it will damage Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has already found himself involved in a series of sleaze investigations, of which this is the most personally dangerous for him. |
References
- ↑ "Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal"
- ↑ "Major Tory donor advised on Uzbekistan deal later found to be $220m bribe"
- ↑ "Boris Johnson has received £500,000 in donations since May"
- ↑ "Tory chair accused of mixing business and political interests"
- ↑ "CONSERVATIVE FRIENDS OF MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA LIMITED"
- ↑ "National security is threatened when politics is in thrall to cash"
- ↑ "Conservatives' influential Middle East forum unscathed by donor row"
- ↑ "Institute for New Economic Thinking - Mohamed Amersi"
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