the saga continues
More research on the remarkable financial & political affairs of the coalition’s new City minister Andrea Leadsom has revealed that the Guernsey-based hedge fund which has funded the tory party, a tory party think-tank, and her own office, is owned (via a British Virgin Islands entity of course) by none other than her own brother-in-law, Peter de Putron, who’s married to Andrea’s sister and fellow ex-investment banker, Hayley. The connection clearly sheds light on the vast financial support for Leadsom’s own political career and her employment in the company during the late 1990s.
But darling Andrea’s offshore connections are far more recent than that. The property company she owns with her husband, along with the two inheritance tax-efficient trusts set up for her offspring, funded buy-to-let properties with loans from jersey-based Kleinwort Benson. They also used the same offshore bank to fund a £1,300,000 house in South Northamptonshire in 2007 just after she had been selected as the local tory candidate. In the same year the loaded Leadsom’s bought a £750,000 des-res in leafy Westminster.
As with the buy-to-let properties, both loans were switched to the UK just as ministerial office beckoned. Purely a co-incidence she claims, as the loan must have matured. As to why such an expensive main home would have been bought with what must have been a six-year mortgage, remains a mystery. Go figure.
