Tax problems cost the head of the Conservative party head

It is clear that there is a serious breach of ministerial law. Therefore I inform you that I have decided to remove you from your position. It was in the letter that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak Nazim Al-Zahawi announced that he had been removed from his post as minister without portfolio and party leader.

Sunak appointed Zahawi as leader and minister of the Conservative Party on 25 October. But an investigation by Prime Minister Sunak’s ethics adviser found that when Al-Zahawi was previously appointed finance minister by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2022, Al-Zahawi failed to tell him he was under investigation by tax authorities. This was related to the sale of shares in the YouGov polling agency, which Zahawi co-founded.

In the end, Zahawi had to pay back a total of £4.8m – including a 30% fine. When he was later appointed to her cabinet by then Prime Minister Liz Truss, he also made no mention of having made this compromise.

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Based on this research, Sunak decided to move on. The British prime minister has come under fire from Tory MPs in recent days because they say he hesitated for too long to oust Zahawi. For Labor leader Keir Starmer, this was a reason to portray Sunak as a ‘hopelessly weak leader’ and to establish contact with Sunak’s wife, who, despite her great wealth, does not pay taxes because she is based outside the UK.

Al-Zahawi will remain a member of parliament. In his letter to Sunak, he kept silent on the tax issue. He wrote that he was proud of the role he had played in tackling the pandemic and quickly rolling out the vaccination program and promised Sunak that he would continue to support his government as an MP in the coming years.

Al-Zahawi, 55, was born in Baghdad and came to the UK with his Kurdish family, fleeing the late Saddam Hussein regime. He became a millionaire through his YouGov role.