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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has fired Conservative Party Chair Nadhim Zahawi after an independent investigation into his tax affairs found a serious breach of the ministerial code.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollowing the completion of the Independent Adviser\u2019s investigation \u2013 the findings of which he has shared with us both \u2013 it is clear that there has been a serious breach of the Ministerial Code,\u201d Sunak said in a letter to Zahawi on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a result, I have informed you of my decision to remove you from your position in His Majesty\u2019s Government.\u201d<\/p>\n
The independent ethics adviser Laurie Magnus found that Zahawi had been misleading when he said that reports last July over his tax affairs were \u201cclearly smears\u201d.<\/p>\n
Zahawi did not correct the record until last week, when he said he had reached a settlement with the authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI consider that this delay in correcting an untrue public statement is inconsistent with the requirement for openness,\u201d Magnus said in a letter to Sunak.<\/p>\n
He added that Zahawi had shown \u201cinsufficient regard\u201d for the requirement \u201cto be honest, open and an exemplary leader through his own behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Zahawi\u2019s conduct as a Minister has fallen below the high standards that, as Prime Minister, you rightly expect from those who serve in your government,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The tax issue relates to Zahawi\u2019s co-founding in 2000 of opinion polling firm YouGov, in which he said his father had taken a stake to support its launch.<\/p>\n
However, Britain\u2019s tax office disagreed with the number of shares given to Zahawi\u2019s father, when the issue was raised during his appointment as finance minister last year.<\/p>\n
Zahawi said on Saturday he had paid dues and settled the matter with the tax office, which he said concluded that he had made a \u201ccareless and not deliberate\u201d error. Zahawi reportedly handed over a fine for late payment worth \u00a35m ($6.2m).<\/p>\n
Sunak and his government had faced questions for several days about the row, with growing pressure on Zahawi to stand aside.<\/p>\n
The opposition Labour party said Sunak should have fired Zahawi immediately when the allegations emerged in newspaper reports this month, rather than seeking to buy time by asking Magnus to investigate.<\/p>\n
The scandal underlined that Sunak was a \u201cweak\u201d prime minister, senior Labour MP Bridget Phillipson told Sky News.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stench of sleaze just hangs around the Conservative Party,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Sunak has faced questions himself about his family\u2019s tax affairs after it emerged that his Indian wife Akshata Murty had for years enjoyed \u201cnon-domicile\u201d status, which shielded her from paying UK taxes on her overseas income from her family\u2019s Infosys business group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has fired Conservative Party Chair Nadhim Zahawi after an independent investigation into his tax affairs found a serious breach of the ministerial code. \u201cFollowing the completion of the Independent Adviser\u2019s investigation \u2013 the findings of which he has shared with us both \u2013 it is clear that there has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184168,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184167"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184169,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184167\/revisions\/184169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}