A knight's tale
Man in the Eye, Issue 1622

BUYING honours has been illegal since Lloyd George hawked them a century ago, so big-money donors to the Conservatives are gonged not for largesse but "political service" as treasurer to the party. Or, in the case of £5.6m donor Sir Mohamed Mansour, knighted in Rishi Sunak's honours list last month, "senior treasurer".

But what service, exactly, does this position entail? For Sir Mohamed, it appears, not much.

First questions
In January last year – when only £606,000 in party donations from Mansour's company Unatrac Ltd had been declared – the Eye first questioned the then new senior treasurer's record.

This included trouble with the taxman through Unatrac (which distributes Caterpillar machinery); the fact that another part of his group, Mantrac, continued to do business in Russia nearly a year after the Ukraine invasion; plus his prior role as a minister in the corrupt Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak.

Publicity drive
After other papers picked up the Eye's story, followed by the subsequent disclosure that Mansour had personally given the Tories £5m soon after being named senior treasurer, it seems the businessman decided his reputation needed a polish. Fast forward to the end of the year and Drive to Succeed, his ghost-written autobiography, appeared in bookshops.

Claiming Mansour was "a private man, not always comfortable talking about myself", its 250 pages contain plenty on childhood setbacks, plus a riches-to-rags-back-to-riches business story starting in the cotton business and taking in cars, banking, Coca-Cola franchises and much else. But there's nothing on, er, "political service" in Britain.

Beyond professing to be "honoured to be appointed" to the "party of Churchill", Mansour has no UK political activity to write about. Nor is there any sign of him doing anything in the party; he is not on its board and his team declined the Eye's invitation to offer details.

Time travel
Mansour did serve, however, for more than three years as transport minister in the Egyptian government of Mubarak, resigning in 2009 after a train crash that cost 50 lives. Of the president, Mansour reflects: "I did not believe that Mubarak was a bad man. He was nowhere near as despotic as Ben Ali [of Tunisia] or Gaddafi [so that's all right then, Ed]. He was autocratic, not vicious."

That would be the type of non-viciousness that presided over human rights abuses so routine that Amnesty International described "torture and mass detention" as "signature policies" of his regime. An estimated 840 people were killed during the 2011 protests that eventually toppled Mubarak.

Tax manoeuvres
Mansour's knighthood citation also mentions business and charitable service. The former was clearly untarnished by Unatrac's recent run-in with the tax authorities, which landed it with a multi-million-pound back-tax bill for under-reporting profits made in the UK for acting on behalf of the group's Dubai arm.

That's not his only dabble in tax efficiency.

The Man Capital investment group of which he is so proud ("I decided to take some of the fruits of our labour... and set up a private investment firm, Man Capital, in London... a city I love") also keeps UK profits down. The firm's London arm earns its modest income by charging fees to the Cayman Islands Man Capital company that makes the real money.

As for the core heavy machinery business, Mansour trotted out excuses for quitting Russia as late as May 2023: "My first priority is always to our people and I didn't want to take any steps to wind down our operations until we could put a plan together to support them. Leadership means acting with a duty of care... while at the same time responding to events." What a guy.

Charity case
Mansour's UK charitable activity features a £100,000 donation to a Covid memorial project at St Paul's Cathedral, plus sucking up to royalty by contributing to King Charles's Dumfries House in Ayrshire – a familiar tale for clients of former Tory fundraiser Ben Elliot such as Mansour undoubtedly is.

And just like a recent predecessor in the big-donor-Tory-treasurer stakes, Ehud Sheleg (Eyes passim), Mansour picked up his K after holding the "job" for not much more than a year. Which is evidently long enough for an honour to be a reward for service rather than an expensively purchased bauble.

More top stories in the latest issue:

LAX AVOIDANCE
Labour's new "expert panel" of tax specialists includes one veteran with a track record of being on the side of those looking to reduce tax payments.

THICK & FAST
Nottinghamshire's police and crime commissioner, standing for re-election next week, was convicted of breaking the speed limit five times in a 12-week period.

SHAPPS SCHTICK
When he weighed in on the issue of Angela Rayner's 2015 council house sale last week, the duplicitous Grant Shapps was in the glassiest of houses.

LIFE AFTER LIZ
A firm set up by a former Downing Street communications director under Liz Truss has won a mysterious £100,000 government contract without competition.

CALLED TO ORDURE
The performance of the Home Office permanent secretary in front of the public accounts committee was so hapless the hearing descended into a farcical caper.

THE PRICE OF REFORM
While encouraging Tory donors to switch teams to Reform UK, Isabel Oakeshott pointed out the latter's "shoe-string budget". But is it really?

HOUSING NEWS
As everyone waits for the final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, the wait for progress in tackling the building safety crisis that followed the fire stretches on.