British Prime Minister David Cameron and Xi Jinping visit The Plough of Cadsden, a country pub near the Chequers estate, to taste English ale on Oct. 22, 2015.
On April 12, the British government announced an investigation into the alleged improper lobbying of government officials by former Prime Minister David Cameron, who represented Greensill Financial, a former lending empire whose business involved financing ZTE and Huawei.
British government launches probe into Cameron
Downing Street said the investigation into the case will be coordinated by Nigel Boardman, a lawyer in the British Cabinet Office. Cameron claims he did not break any lobbying rules, but in a statement on Sunday (11), he said he should have contacted ministers through “official channels”.
Grimsill, a multibillion-dollar lending empire that was founded by Australian Grimsill in 2011 and grew rapidly and competed with major banks through a “supply chain financing business” that emerged after the financial crisis, collapsed in March.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Johnson said the investigation would focus on the supply chain financing business, a financial technique in which Greenhill excelled.
“This independent review will also investigate how (the applicant) was awarded contracts and how its business representatives engaged with the government.” The spokesman added that “there is great concern about this matter and as a result the Prime Minister has called for a review to ensure that the government is fully transparent about such activities.”
“Private text messages” and “private meeting nibbles”
The British media began reporting on Cameron’s lobbying a few weeks ago, and according to the Financial Times, months before Grimsil declared bankruptcy, Cameron lobbied the British government for Grimsil to receive a corporate loan granted by the British government in response to the Communist Party of China (New Crown) epidemic, but the Bank of England explicitly refused to include it in the epidemic bailout.
British media reported that Cameron also sent text messages to British Finance Minister Rishi Sunak and other senior Treasury officials, hoping to involve Grimsill in the government’s “COVID corporate finance agency program.
Cameron also met with Health Secretary Matt Hancock in 2019, saying he was having “private drinks” with him, but took the opportunity to discuss payment plans for Britain’s health care system, the NHS.
Cameron began working as an adviser to Greenshiel in August 2018, two years after he stepped down as prime minister. Under current British law, senior civil servants cannot lobby on the issue for two years after leaving office, so Cameron says he has not broken any rules.
But Gordon Brown, another former British prime minister, said former prime ministers “should never” lobby the government for commercial purposes, telling BBC Radio 4, “It’s an insult to public service.”
Cameron’s “golden age” is a mirage
During his tenure as prime minister, Cameron was a vocal advocate of stronger UK-China trade cooperation and worked hard to foster the so-called “golden age” between China and Britain. He hosted Xi Jinping, who was on a state visit to the UK in 2015, and took him to a pub near his home for drinks and fish fries.
A year after Cameron left office, he led a British government investment program involving cooperation between the United Kingdom and China, and he was responsible for a $1 billion fund to invest in projects related to the Communist Party’s Belt and Road Initiative.
At the start of the Golden Decade, a large number of investment agreements were signed between Chinese and British companies. But many of the projects were later found to be a shambles.
For example, a £1 billion deal signed in 2016 between the city of Sheffield and Sichuan Guodong Construction Company was declared “dead” after hundreds of thousands of pounds were wasted. A 2010 agreement between the city of Wirral, near Liverpool, and China’s Senhua Resources Holdings Ltd. to build an international trade center was abandoned halfway through. Although some projects were implemented, the actual investment was much smaller than the “big pie” drawn up by the Chinese Communist Party.
Later, the UK and the CCP had a tense relationship due to the issues of Hong Kong’s autonomy, human rights in Xinjiang, and Huawei’s 5G. The UK revoked the license of China International Television (CGTN), the CCP’s major foreign service, in the UK, and sanctioned CCP officials. The “golden” era envisioned by Cameron has become “scrap metal”.
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