A billionaire at bay

In the late 1990s it began to look as if the media were gunning for millionaire Tories in alphabetical order. First Jonathan Aitken, a joint target of Granada and the Guardian. Then Jeffrey Archer, jailed after a sting operation by the News of the World. Next in line seemed to be the mysterious Michael Ashcroft, appointed Conservative party treasurer by William Hague, donor of many millions to the party, and victim of the strange, new alliance between New Labour and the Times. In 1999 Hague tried to nominate Ashcroft as a ‘working’ member of the House of Lords, only for the nomination initially to be blocked by Tony Blair on the recommendation of the Honours Scrutiny Committee. Ashcroft only got his peerage after a furious and ‘urgent’ phone call by Hague to Blair while he was in the midst of a European summit in Lisbon.

Unlike Aitken or Archer, Ashcroft’s background was largely unexplored. He’d made his hundreds of millions from clever deal-making — buying and selling companies at the opportune moment. What intrigued people were his links with the former British colony of Belize, and his extraordinary role in the economy of the tiny Central American state which has long been regarded as a significant centre for the South American drugs trade and extensive money-laundering.

The Belize government had granted Ashcroft’s businesses an extraordinary 30-year holiday from tax, and in gratitude for his subsequent investment they also made him ambassador to the United Nations. And just as Ashcroft was said to play Monopoly with the Belize economy, he was accused, after the 1997 election, when the Tories were in huge debt, of buying up the Conservative party. His work and donations were largely credited with keeping the party solvent.