A “dark money” group that helps bankroll the Conservative Party has in turn taken donations worth six figures from businesses linked to wealthy foreign nationals who are banned from making their own political donations.
Analysis by openDemocracy shows that the Carlton Club – an elite private members’ club in London that has long funded the Tories – has handed out more than £247,000 to the Conservative Party and its MPs since the last election.
But the Carlton Club has itself received well over half that sum from two companies run by wealthy Swiss, German and Russian nationals who are not UK citizens. Under election law, only UK citizens are allowed to make political donations, but loopholes allow their money to be passed via third parties such as these.
