Note to journalists: If you use any quote from this story I'd be grateful if you'd source/credit it properly!
The man behind the £2.5 million Tory loan "revealed" in The Times today will come as a big disappointment to anyone looking for a Tory-troubles story. I can exclusively reveal that the man behind the loan is Michael Hintze, an Australian, who lives with his family in London, where he votes, and the loan to the Tory Party is only a very small proportion of his financial support of worthy causes in his adopted country.
Mr Hintze, who is already a declared donor to the Conservative Party, has given multiple millions to a large number of British charities in recent years. Together with his wife, he is behind the new sculpture gallery at The V & A, which opens in the next few weeks and is named as The Dorothy & Michael Hintze Gallery, and has been made possible by a £1.5 million donation from their charitable trust. Mr Hintze turns out to be a major financial donor to a wide range of admirable causes, none of which have been widely publicised, with the exception of the V & A Dorothy & Michael Hintze Gallery. His philanthropy has seen him supporting a vast number of causes, including his local Trinity Hospice, to which he is the biggest donor. The Evelina Charity at St Thomas's Hospital, where all four of his children were born, has also been a benefactor of his generosity. In the area of the arts he has given significant sums to: The Old Vic Theatre, The Donmar Theatre, The National Theatre and The Cartoon Arts Trust. In addition, he supports The Water Meadow Trust in Salisbury, the local churches where he and his family live and is a major donor to The Princes Trust and The Princes Foundation.
Next week, my sources inform me, Mr Hintze will be in Sydney, where he is funding a Chair in International Security at Sydney University. He is also behind the restoration of Michael Angelo's famous fresco in The Pauline Chapel in The Vatican, which has cost over £1 million.
When I contacted Mr Hintze, who I met at a recent Conservative Party dinner, he was totally up-front about his support for the Conservative Party saying: "I am very proud of this country and acknowledge the debt I owe to it. I am very fortunate to be in the position which allows me to put something back to many charities and causes in this country and have been keen to do so by supporting some of Britain's great institutions". He continued: "My support for the Conservative Party is something I am immensely proud of and I am pleased to be able to help, both with the declared donations I have made and through the loan from the UK based trading company, Morain UK, of which I am an ultimate beneficiary and which responded to the Party's need for support by agreeing to a secured loan on commercial terms last year".
He ended his comment by telling me: "I have supported the Conservative Party because I can and the law allows me to do so. I truly believe this country needs a strong opposition."
More evidence that the excuse offered by the Tories yesterday - that they had to keep the names a secret to protect donors from losing government contracts wasn't just a smear on the civil service but was also garbage.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on this man on being open. People who give money to political parties are not evil, but committed. They don't deserve the public attacks they have been subjected to and David Cameron and the Conservative front bench should be ashamed of their behaviour in the last few days.
Anonymous, Given the view you have just expressed. I find it funny that you do not use your own name when you post.
ReplyDeleteI would have thought that putting "worthy cause" and "Conservative party" together was an oxymoron!
ReplyDeleteWhat I find strange is that Hintze is a well known Tory donor and has happily had his name published in the past when he has given a large sum to the Tory Party, and fair enough. A major figure on the Labour list was Lord Sainsbury - also a longstanding and well known major donor and rather obviously not a man angling for a peerage.
ReplyDeleteSo if it isn't anonimity and it isn't peerages, what is the purpose behind these rather bizarre "loans"? Is there some tax advantage involved if the donor writes it off as a bad debt some years later? The newspapers just don't seem to have looked into this properly. We should be told.
Congratulations on a great scoop Iain!
ReplyDeleteBut shouldn't the Tories reveal ALL the lenders?
annak - hilarious comment! I find it quite telling that all these Nu Lab clones post under the cloak of annonymity. Got something to hide?
ReplyDeleteAs regards the Tory loans.... if I gave a loan to an organisation who included a tick box for me to check if i wanted to remain annonymous then i would definately do so.
Aside from the implications towards any possible business discrimination (if 2 companies were bidding for an NHS contract and one had a declared Tory loaner and one a declared Labour loaner who do you think Hewitt would opt for??) I would also not want people knowing how much money I have to give to the organisation.
Labour are doing their best to chuck some of the sh*t they are covered in onto the Tories. The fact is that they are engaging in allegedly corrupt practices and we are not.
"People who give money to political parties are not evil, but committed. They don't deserve the public attacks they have been subjected to..."
ReplyDeleteHmm, sure. But perhaps not if their loans are given in return for peerages and public contracts...
I can think of a couple of things that go with you 'anonymous'.Coward obviously, but also I think moron would be appropiate.
ReplyDeleteSurely the whole point of the "Loans for Peerages" scandal is not the loans themselves, but the hole in corner way in which they were given/solicited. If the loans to Labour were all above board, why were they so secret? Why didn't they appear in Labour Party accounts? How come the Treasurer didn't know about them? How convenient that the donors/lenders all qualified for knighthoods or peerages - nothing to do with the money, of course!
ReplyDeleteNo one is saying that political parties shouldn't borrow money - but obviously the PM and Lord Levy thought these particular loans (all £14,000,000 of them) were so dodgy they didn't want to tell ANYONE about them - certainly not the Party Treasurer whose job, one might think, is to keep the accounts and know what money is coming in and going out.
I'm not privy to Conservative Party accountancy procedures, but I understand all their loans appear in their accounts and their Treasurer certainly did know about them. Incidentally, David Cameron hasn't nominated anyone for an honour, either.
How do I get him to sponsor my charity?
ReplyDeleteThe first editions of the Sundays don't have any Tory loan issue on the front pages. Instead, new questions about Labour Loans for Lordships sleaze, with the lump otherwise known as the Deputy Prime Minister now potentially in a spot of bother for some sort of deal.
ReplyDeleteit's on the BBC, but they are crediting The Observer.
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4846090.stm
Demanding to know the lenders to the Tories is just a propoganda stunt by Labour to deflect the attention from their own dodgy dealings.
ReplyDeleteThe lenders made their loans to the Tory party privately and as there appears to be no question over the way the loans were handled by the Tories then I see no reason why these anonymous lenders should be thrust into the public eye.
Lets not forget that it is the Labour Party that have been getting secret loans and keeping them from their treasurer and the Labour Party that nominated their biggest lenders for peerages and the Labour Party that have given large contracts to their biggest lenders.
As far as we know, the Tories have done no such thing so why should they be pressed now to reveal their lenders?
I see The Times have ignored the polite request to credit you for your scoop, Iain. Funnily enough they have a picture on page 13 of a child copying another's work during an exam...
ReplyDeleteNWO Illuminati at their most blatant. BEWARE!
ReplyDelete