- Asian Tory fundraiser tells MoS reporter he can supply PM’s mobile number to donors
- He also claims he can arrange meetings with PM and Tory chairmen Baroness Warsi and Lord Feldman
- Offers meeting with Theresa May to discuss relaxing immigration laws
By
Abul Taher, Robert Verkaik and Glen Owen
Last updated at 3:19 PM on 15th January 2012
A major sleaze scandal erupted last night after a Tory fundraiser was caught boasting he could arrange one-to-one access to the Prime Minister and supply his personal mobile phone number for £10,000.
The prominent party activist, who claims extensive links to the Government, bragged to a Mail on Sunday reporter: ‘Those who pay £10,000 a year get Cameron’s mobile.’
Rickie Sehgal, 50, also said donors could dine with the PM – or any other Ministers – and raise any issue they wanted, including relaxing immigration curbs.
Asked if £10,000 guaranteed access to the PM, Mr Sehgal said: ‘One hundred per cent, Cameron… you name it.’
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Party guest: Rickie Sehgal, chairman of British Asian Conservatives Link, with David Cameron at the Tories’ Black White Ball in 2006
Taped: Mr Sehgal talks to the undercover reporter from The Mail On Sunday
The BACL website, seen featuring the Tory logo
He also claimed he could arrange for Tory MPs to make personal appearances in support of business ventures.
When confronted about his claims, Mr Sehgal admitted that he was ‘highly embarrassed’ to have been caught making his boasts, which he said he had exaggerated to impress the undercover reporter.
‘There are many other people that we know who would just like to part with money and go and talk to Cameron, and that does not exist in reality,’ he said.
Mayor: Mr Sehgal and his wife with Boris Johnson at a BACL event
Line-up: Mr Sehgal meets Home Secretary Theresa May at the 2010 Conservative conference
Last night Mr Sehgal, the chairman of British Asian Conservative Link (BACL), was thrown out of the Tory Party after senior officials studied the evidence gathered by this newspaper.
A spokesman also warned that BACL, which stages fundraising events to boost the number of Asian Tory MPs, faced being stripped of its right to use the official Conservative logo.
But the disclosure that Mr Cameron’s most private contact details are being touted around to wealthy businessmen will prompt fresh concerns over ‘cash for access’ at the heart of Government.
The revelation is particularly embarrassing for No 10 because Mr Sehgal was photographed whispering into the Prime Minister’s ear at the Tories’ lavish Black White winter ball, where tickets cost up to £1,000 a head.
Close ties: Left, with Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who is his local MP – and with Health Secretary Andrew Lansley (right) at the 2010 Tory conference
BACL’s website also features pictures of Mr Sehgal and other BACL executives meeting senior Tory Ministers, including Home Secretary Theresa May, Attorney General Dominic Grieve and International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell. There are also pictures of London Mayor Boris Johnson attending a BACL event.
The Mail on Sunday began its investigation following a tip-off from a leading legal source who claimed that Asian businessmen were using BACL to gain access to senior Tory Ministers.
An undercover reporter posing as a businessman who ran a domestic cleaning company in East London met Mr Sehgal at his office. The reporter said he was keen to join BACL’s exclusive 1000 Club, which its website claims can give members access to Ministers and MPs for business and personal benefits. Membership of the club costs £1,000.
Asked if he could arrange a meeting with a Minister to discuss how to help solve personal business problems, Mr Sehgal replied: ‘I can facilitate a meeting with them for you to have a conversation about any issue that you want. What happens, how you two interact with that issue, is beyond my control.’
At the hour-long meeting, which took place at the headquarters of Mr Sehgal’s IT company, Transputec Computers plc, in Park Royal, North-West London, Mr Sehgal claimed that he had access to Mr Cameron to the extent that he can lobby the Prime Minister on behalf of parliamentary candidates from an Asian background.
He said: ‘By association with BACL, we take advantage of positive discrimination that exists today to say there aren’t enough Bangladeshi MPs… I might go straight to the Prime Minister, or the central party.’
He also boasted of close links to other senior Cabinet Ministers, especially Baroness Warsi and Lord Feldman of Elstree, the joint chairs of the Tory Party, saying links to the pair also gave him access to Mr Cameron’s diary.
‘Andrew Feldman and Sayeeda Warsi, they are the two chairmens [sic] right, so they run the machinery of the Conservative Party.
‘They are like the administration, but they are very important because through them you see all the diaries of the PM, all the movements and things like that.’
And he claimed that he knew all Asian Tory politicians ‘like the back of my hand’, including rising Tory stars such as Priti Patel, the MP for Witham, and Alok Sharma, the MP for Reading West – both of whom were helped by BACL in their Election campaigns.
When the reporter asked if he could become a member of BACL’s 1000 Club, Mr Sehgal said yes.
Then, without prompting, he mentioned an even more exclusive group where members pay £10,000 or more a year.
Rehgal boasted of close links to other senior Cabinet Ministers, especially Baroness Warsi, pictured
Mr Sehgal said: ‘The guys who pay £10,000 a year, they get David Cameron’s mobile number. You don’t need that, trust me, you don’t need that. One step at a time.’
When the reporter asked: ‘Hang on, hang on, I don’t want David Cameron’s mobile number, but those guys who paid ten grand, do they get meetings with him?’ Mr Sehgal replied: ‘Yeah.’
Asked whether this was to ‘discuss issues, legislative issues and so on’, Mr Sehgal said: ‘They sit and have dinner with, eh, him.’
The reporter then asked Mr Sehgal: ‘The guys who pay £10,000 and so on, could they, if they wanted through you, have a one-to-one meeting with Cameron?’
Mr Sehgal replied: ‘One hundred per cent. One hundred per cent. Cameron, Sayeeda [Warsi], Andrew [Feldman], you name it.’
He then promised to arrange a one-to-one meeting with Ministers after the reporter became a member.
When the reporter asked: ‘I like the group meetings with Ministers, that’s cool, but if need be, if my business ever requires it, I could get, you could help me get access to, erm, a meeting with a Minister or an MP, couldn’t you? That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?’ Mr Sehgal replied: ‘OK, look, I can’t give you a yes categorically. I can facilitate a meeting with them for you to have a conversation about any issue that you want. What happens, how you two interact with that issue, is beyond my control.’
The reporter then asked Mr Sehgal if he could have access to an immigration Minister to discuss a change in Government policy, saying that he wanted to meet a Minister to ask him if the Government could end the restriction that prevents non-skilled migrants from Third World countries from entering Britain. Such a change would allow the fake businessman to bring in immigrants from Bangladesh to work as cleaners for his company.
The reporter asked: ‘I am not saying arrange a meeting with Theresa May tomorrow or in two months, but as time goes by… if I pay £1,000 or £10,000, doesn’t matter, I would like to ask Theresa [May] in person, just to let her know this is a concern.’
Mr Sehgal replied: ‘You will get that opportunity, you’ll get that opportunity, that’s the whole point.’
However, Mr Sehgal also stressed the importance of grassroots political campaigning.
After Mr Sehgal made his claim that £10,000 could secure Mr Cameron’s mobile number, the undercover reporter offered to pay the same amount of money towards BACL. But Mr Sehgal urged the fake businessman to become a member first and engage in party political campaigning for the Tories. He told the reporter: ‘Go slowly, go slowly first, I tell you why…’
He added: ‘The early stages should not be about money, OK, the early stages, because you got to learn, you got to interact… you also have to do other non-… you know things like canvassing, you got to go out, for example, if you are [sic] local Conservative MP who is not elected, you want to help him, or others, you got to go out, when they need some help.’
Last night a senior Tory Party source insisted that Mr Sehgal was a ‘Walter Mitty character’ whom the Prime Minister could not recall ever meeting.
The source said: ‘As a party we have made concerted efforts to introduce transparency into party funding – far more so than Labour. We would never, for instance, have accepted money from their millionaire benefactor Andrew Rosenfeld.’
It is the latest in a series of cash-for-access scandals to hit the party since the General Election win of May 2010.
Last December, PR firm Bell Pottinger was accused of offering clients access to Steve Hilton, Mr Cameron’s chief strategist; Ed Llewellyn, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff; and even Foreign Secretary William Hague. And shortly after Mr Cameron entered Downing Street, it emerged that the Tories were offering private dinners and lunches with the Prime Minister to businessmen who paid £50,000.
Since it was set up in 1997, BACL has proved to be the Tories’ main contact with the Asian community, especially wealthy businessmen.
BACL has hosted a series of lavish dinners at the Carlton Club, an exclusive Conservative Party haunt, where key Tory politicians have been wined and dined.
On May 11 last year, BACL held an event at the Carlton Club where 90 diners paid £100 each to hear a speech by Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, an event held in honour of Richard Harrington, the Tory MP for Watford, who was helped by BACL in his successful 2010 Election campaign.
Other guests included Tony Baldry MP and Lord Popat of Stanmore, a multi-millionaire and Tory peer who is a BACL patron.
Mr Sehgal himself has also developed close ties with a clutch of senior Conservative MPs including Miss Patel and the Attorney General Mr Grieve.
In 2009, Mr Cameron was guest of honour at Millbank Tower in Westminster at an event organised by Lord Popat, who was then Mr Dolar Popat. BACL’s website said the tycoon ‘spared no expense in organising the event’. A year later, Mr Popat was controversially made a Tory peer, leading to accusations of ‘cash for peerages’.
An analysis of Electoral Commission records shows that Lord Popat donated £319,641 in the six years prior to being given a peerage.
BACL has three advisers who have all been honoured for their work.
In June 2010 Dr Prem Sharma, a veterinary surgeon and father of Alok Sharma, who is the Tory MP for Reading West, received an OBE for his services to the community. Dolar Popat was made a Tory peer in the same year. The third adviser, cooking oil tycoon Rami Ranger, a founder of BACL, was awarded an MBE in 2005. Since 2005 Mr Ranger has donated £8,719.92 in his own name and through his company, Sun Mark Oil.
Mr Sehgal is the managing director of Transputec Computers Plc. Transputec has IT contracts with both BACL and the Ministry of Justice. The company has an annual turnover of £20 million, and reported £375,000 profits for last year.
Records in Companies House show that its parent company, Investact, is registered in the Isle of Man, a popular tax haven with British businesses. Transputec appears to be a family business with Mr Sehgal’s wife, Pramilla, 52, listed as a secretary of the company. Mr Sehgal’s younger brother, Sunil, 48, is also listed as a director.
In 2007, Sunil Sehgal and his wife Seema, 47, were accused by US authorities of being part of a ring that used insider information to buy options on shares in TXU, a Dallas electric power company, shortly before it was taken over by a private equity group in a £29 billion deal.
In 2009, the Sehgals agreed to settle the insider trading charges. They did not admit or deny the allegations but agreed to pay huge fines. Sunil Sehgal was ordered to pay £171,070, including interest, and Seema agreed to pay £201,343.
According to Companies House, Rickie Sehgal is the director of three other IT companies.
A graduate in computer science and physics from Chelsea College, which is part of London University, he also sat on the committee of the Ealing Southall branch of the Conservative Party.
He and Mrs Sehgal and their two children, Rishi, 25, and Shailen, 23, live in a £1 million country house in the sought after village of Iver, Buckinghamshire.
‘I’M EMBARRASSED. I WAS BOASTING’
Rickie Sehgal was frank about his behaviour when he was confronted by The Mail on Sunday with evidence of his conversation with our reporter.
‘I’m highly embarrassed,’ he said. ‘We meet politicians because we are a political organisation, to have lunches, dinner, things like that. In that context, you would be able to meet.’
The businessman said that the elite club of £10,000 donors was a reference to the fact that BACL was being turned into a new organisation, the Conservative Friends of India (CFI), which was set to be launched by David Cameron in the House of Commons later this year.
Mr Sehgal said that the CFI’s executive would be staffed by donors, each of whom would be expected to give a ‘voluntary contribution’ of £10,000.
‘It has been indicated to me that he [David Cameron] would potentially be launching the CFI. That would be the first point that there would be any contact with him,’ said Mr Sehgal.
He added that, by its nature, the role would give the donors clout and contacts.
He said: ‘The executive board that runs the CFI make a donation to run the machinery, so it becomes a far more effective organisation because you have qualified people doing the job. They don’t get Mr Cameron’s number but, as executives, naturally they are able to drive the organisation.’
Mr Sehgal insisted that he had exaggerated his influence to impress our reporter, and it was ‘completely wrong’ to say that the Prime Minister’s phone number could be bought.
‘It doesn’t happen. I was boasting. There are many other people that we know who would just like to part with money and go and talk to Cameron, whoever it is, and actually that does not exist in reality. I myself don’t get to have lunch with Cameron.
‘I was trying to communicate that people like me and him [our bogus businessman] are small business owners who have been born and brought up in this country, absolutely love this country, and know that there are huge opportunities.
‘In these difficult times, being Asians we may have one other advantage in the sense that we can get our brothers and sisters to be a bit more politically active. The BACL would be able to take those positive energies and turn it into something constructive.
‘But I did not want him to think that direct access is provided, because it isn’t. David Cameron and I don’t really know each other.
‘Please don’t think of me as a crook or anything like that.
‘In conversations we are having about the morphing of the BACL into a new entity, Mr Cameron has been proposed as a patron. It is an important vehicle but . . . it is an insignificant establishment in the scheme of things, not what people might assume it is – Asians trying to get access.
‘I am embarrassed.’
Mr Sehgal’s local MP is Mr Grieve. Last year a number of Tory MPs, including Mr Grieve and newly elected Mr Harrington, were guests at Rishi Sehgal’s wedding. The lavish ceremony was held at the five-star Grosvenor House hotel in Park Lane, Central London, and is believed to have cost £120,000.
A Conservative spokesman said last night: ‘BACL is an organisation independent of the Conservative Party and Mr Sehgal had no authority to make these patently absurd suggestions.
‘They were made without the knowledge or approval of anyone in the party and, as he has since admitted, they were nothing more than idle boasts.
‘We have accepted his resignation from the party with immediate effect and will consider whether BACL should be allowed to continue using the party’s logo.’
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Corruption in politics…..really… !
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Rickie should be sacked instantly, along with anyone else in the Conservative Party does similar. MP’s Expenses Scandal, Lobbyists and now this. If Politics is in any way to resonate with voters, David Cameron will act decisively.
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I only saw 2women…We need more Maggies!
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Looking at the names listed there it seems he’s just doing what the rest of them do in the Tories. Lining their pockets at the expense of everyone. “We’re in this together?” Cameron once said, yea right! Each to their own I say.
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I’m sorry but “relaxing immigration laws”, we need tougher immigration laws!
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I would expect nothing less from this man.
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Why is this not the headline?
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Most Asians I have known were glad to be away from corrupt politics in their own former countries.
So now we have an Asian economy and the same buying power politics they find abhorrent back home.
Most will despair of this going on, and again slighting a better society many are trying to find.
Whatever happened to the peers that used illegal claims and have not appeared on the crime list, yet have not been cleared, have they bought out of House dismissal or prison?
Most are very nice and decent people – except where politics is concerned, where it seems often cases are raised of corruption, yet vanish.
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I will sell you my mobile phone number of GBP 9000
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Ermmmm…
Sod the ins and outs of all this…
Give me Cameron’s phone number. I have a thing or two to embellish his answer machine.
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