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Panama's honorary consul in Belize City questioned in UK cash for peerages probe

Tony Blair's embarrassment has a Panama angle

by Eric Jackson, partly from other media

On December 14 Tony Blair became the first British Prime Minister ever to be questioned by police while in office. It's about a scandal in which two top Labor Party fundraisers and a major contributor have been arrested and released on bail, on suspicion of dealing in knighthoods and peerages in exchange for large campaign contributions. As head of government Blair has the power to bestow honorary titles like knighthoods and membership in the House of Lords (the latter known as peerages).

Blair has not been named as a suspect in any crime, and his party is apparently not the only one that police are investigating.

From reports in the British press, the investigation has been going on since at least last April, after Scottish National Party Member of Parliament Angus MacNeil filed a complaint, and both the ruling Labor Party and the opposition Conservatives are being questioned about some of their campaign financing methods and about the possibility that under this and previous governments appointments to the House of Lords have been exchanged for large campaign contributions. If it is shown that peerages or knighthoods were sold, it would be a violation of a 1925 law passed after a scandal over such practices ruined the reputation of World War I Prime Minister David Lloyd George and consigned his once-ruling Liberals to minor party status thereafter.

Questioned under arrest and then released on bail were Lord Levy, a Labour fundraiser nicknamed "Cashpoint;" Des Smith, a teacher and Labor Party activist who told an undercover journalist that large enough donations would likely be rewarded with peerages; and Sir Christopher Evans, a biotech millionaire and large Labor contributor who was knighted by Blair and whose personal notes of a meeting with Levy made reference to an apparent choice between "a K or a big P."

More than 50 other people from both the ruling and opposition parties have been questioned by police in the probe.

There have yet to be any formal charges pressed and BBC political reporter Nick Robinson says that there may never be any. However, it looks awful and even if no proof of a criminal explicit quid pro quo can be found, in many British voters' minds it's the sort of "sleaze" that gets parties thrown out of power.

So what does this have to do with Panama?

Lord Michael Ashcroft is one of the Conservative Party’s main contributors, reportedly to the tune of 1 million pounds per year. Ashcroft, who is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Belize but who lives in Florida, is also Panama’s honorary consul in Belize City.

It has been revealed that police questioned Lord Ashcroft about the suspected cash for titles practices this past October. It is widely presumed that he got into the House of Lords through his contributions to the Tories, but nobody has ever alleged a quid pro quo and he was reportedly not warned that he may be charged with any crime, which police would have had to do were he a target of the investigation.

Another matter that’s wrapped up in the inquiry is the matter of large loans to political parties instead of outright contributions, and Ashcroft has apparently loaned a lot of money to the Conservatives as well.

Now why would the Torrijos administration appoint him to that post? You’d have to ask them --- the Ministry of Foreign Relations Internet pages that mention Ashcroft are all down at the moment. But one hint is that Ashcroft, an international offshore financier, has also worked out of Panama and at one time the current Minister of Canal Affairs, Ricaurte Vásquez, was an employee of his.