Long Terms All Round?

Academic plagiarism is not bigger news than the corruption of the Secretary of State for Defence. It was bad enough when Wes Streeting was hawking the NHS to Palantir, which in 2024 paid only two million pounds in British corporation tax, despite revenue here of £247 million and profits of £25.3 million. But now, Robert Mendick, Tony Diver and Gordon Rayner write:

Wes Streeting was bankrolled by a think tank linked to one of the world’s most notorious fraudsters, The Telegraph can disclose.

Mr Streeting, who is now the Defence Secretary, accepted £37,500 in donations from Labour for the Long Term (LLT) over 2022 and 2023 despite significant concerns among some senior figures in the party over the source of the funds.

Just one month before LLT made its first donation, its founder, David Lawrence, had accepted a £500,000 gift from Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cryptocurrency billionaire, who was subsequently sentenced to 25 years in jail for fraud after stealing billions of dollars from his customers.

Senior Labour sources claimed that other shadow ministers had been advised not to accept donations from LLT. Mr Lawrence, who disputes this, later stood down as a parliamentary candidate after discussion about his connections to Bankman-Fried, known as the “Crypto King”.

It is understood Labour has never raised any suspicions about the source of Mr Streeting’s funding with the Electoral Commission.

It is illegal for MPs and political parties to accept donations over £500 from foreigners. However, organisations such as LLT can take advantage of a loophole that allows them to accept money from abroad.

The donations pose a serious difficulty for Mr Streeting, who played a key part in the downfall of Sir Keir Starmer and has now returned to the Cabinet in Andy Burnham’s Government.

They raise questions over whether the Defence Secretary benefited from funds originally stolen from clients of Bankman-Fried, who became one of the richest people in the world through his digital currency business FTX.

Bankman-Fried was previously accused of secretly funnelling cash to Democrats in the US to advance a philosophy called effective altruism, in which entrepreneurs are encouraged to use their wealth to influence politics in pursuit of good causes.

Labour has attacked both the Tories and Reform over foreign donations.

Alex Burghart, shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said: “The Defence Secretary has serious questions to answer. He must immediately come clean about the source of his donations and any possible connections with the disgraced crook Sam Bankman-Fried. The public deserve total transparency.”

LLT registered its website on June 20, 2022. Court documents related to the Bankman-Fried fraud case and unearthed by The Telegraph show that Mr Lawrence was given the £500,000 gift ten days later by the crypto billionaire.

Mr Lawrence then arranged a £30,000 LLT donation to Mr Streeting, which was made on Aug 3 that year to fund a policy adviser, Dr Thomas Gardiner.

In December that year, Bankman-Fried was charged with seven counts of fraud, accused of stealing billions of dollars from customers of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Mr Streeting accepted a final donation from LLT worth £7,500 on Aug 3, 2023.

The Telegraph has been told by a senior Labour source that several other shadow cabinet ministers were approached, including Darren Jones, who went on to serve as chief secretary to Sir Keir, but the offers were rejected after concerns from Labour about the source of the funds.

Mr Lawrence said this was not true.

Although MPs cannot accept money coming from foreign citizens, a loophole allows unincorporated associations such as think tanks to accept money without having to make the source public – meaning they can potentially be used to funnel foreign donations to politicians.

The Electoral Commission has called for the loophole to be closed, and Labour is planning to introduce stricter rules.

Mr Lawrence told The Telegraph that he donated Bankman-Fried’s money to UK-based charities that work on disaster relief, prevention of cruelty to animals, and child poverty, and did not use it to fund LLT.

He added: “I unreservedly condemn Bankman-Fried’s actions and had no knowledge or suspicion of any criminal activity until it was reported in the news.”

Mr Lawrence claimed that LLT’s donation to Mr Streeting was in fact funded by another donor.

However, Electoral Commission records show that the donor he named, a City investor, only started giving money to LLT in February 2023, around seven months after its first donation to Mr Streeting.

Mr Lawrence declined to explain this discrepancy. When asked for clarification, he said: “LLT had a range of donors (all UK-based) and declarations were made in accordance with Electoral Commission requirements.

“LLT did not receive any donations from the FTX Foundation or Mr Bankman-Fried.”

Mr Lawrence’s donation paid for Dr Gardiner to work for Mr Streeting for two days a week, on a salary of £2,500 a month.

Dr Gardiner, a GP who also has links to the effective altruism movement, continued to work for Mr Streeting when Labour was voted into power in July 2024, and was an influential member of Mr Streeting’s team of advisers inside the Department of Health.

There is no suggestion that Mr Streeting was aware of the source for the donation from Labour for the Long Term when he accepted it. A spokesman said he had never had any contact with Bankman-Fried, and his name was never mentioned in discussions with LLT.

Mr Streeting’s team asked LLT for a list of its donors before accepting the money. Mr Lawrence was on this list, but Bankman-Fried was not.

Both Mr Lawrence and Bankman-Fried support effective altruism, which encourages entrepreneurs to make as much money as possible and then use it to change the world by funnelling it into charities and political projects.

Bankman-Fried used stolen funds to make more than $100m (£74m) of campaign contributions before the 2022 mid-term US elections, mostly to the Democrats.

Prosecutors claimed he made some donations under the names of other people to get around spending laws.

Other effective altruists have been accused of meddling in defence, Mr Streeting’s current policy brief. There is no suggestion they have influenced Mr Streeting’s policies in the role.

In the US, the artificial intelligence company Anthropic – founded by two effective altruists – clashed with the department of defence over the use of AI in weapons systems.

It has also been accused of pushing for regulations that would stifle its competitors, and has hired a string of former officials in the Biden administration.

LLT has also weighed in on defence policy, calling for international agreements on how AI could be used in relation to nuclear weapons in evidence to Parliament in 2023.

Mr Lawrence, who became an adherent to effective altruism while studying at Oxford, was regarded as a rising star in Westminster and was selected as Labour’s candidate in Basingstoke in December 2022, six months after he donated to Mr Streeting’s office.

However, after court papers detailing Bankman-Fried’s sizeable gift were circulated in Labour headquarters the following year, the party asked Mr Lawrence to give assurances that the billionaire’s money had not been used to fund his campaign.

Mr Lawrence denied that any of the gift had been used for political purposes, but was unable to reassure party bosses with his own financial records, senior Labour sources told The Telegraph.

He agreed to step down as the candidate in November 2023, one month after Bankman-Fried’s records were published, and released a statement explaining he would not contest the seat for “personal reasons”.

Mr Lawrence said: “The FTX scandal emerged at the same time as the birth of my child which compounded the stressful circumstances. I raised the situation with party staff and, after discussions, decided to stand down.”

Mr Streeting will inevitably now come under scrutiny over the due diligence carried out before he accepted the £37,500 from LLT. Mr Streeting’s spokesman told The Telegraph that all due diligence processes had been followed before he accepted the donation, including with the involvement of the Labour Party, and that the list of donors to the think tank that his team reviewed did not include Bankman-Fried.

“None of this due diligence gave any indication that the money came from anywhere other than the declared sources,” the spokesman said.

“Wes has had no contact with this individual and he was never mentioned in any discussions with LLT. All donations were and are declared in the proper way, in accordance with the rules.”

A Labour Party spokesman said: “The Labour Party carried out due diligence checks ahead of these donations being received, through which no issues were identified.”

Bankman-Fried, who was once the richest person in the world under the age of 30, was arrested in December 2022 after his cryptocurrency business FTX collapsed with billions of dollars of debt. He was jailed in 2024 for one of the biggest frauds in history.

It is thought Bankman-Fried and Mr Lawrence were introduced through William MacAskill, an Oxford professor who is one of the founders of the effective altruism movement.

Effective altruism has become a popular cause in Silicon Valley circles. Supporters include Dustin Moskovitz, a Facebook billionaire and former roommate of Mark Zuckerberg, who paid the salaries of a group of aides in the Biden administration.

The disclosure of Bankman-Fried’s gift will raise further concerns about the use of unincorporated associations, including some Westminster think tanks, which can act as a funnel for foreign money into British politics.

The organisations do not need to have a formal structure, file accounts or declare the source of their funding, although their own political donations must be reported to the Electoral Commission.

The emergence of the source of the donation comes at a time when funding of political parties is under the spotlight.

Nigel Farage’s political future has been cast into doubt over his acceptance of a £5m gift from Christopher Harborne, one of Britain’s richest men, who also made his fortune from cryptocurrency and now lives in Thailand.

Mr Farage is accused of failing to declare the gift when he became an MP – he denies he has done anything wrong – while Labour is trying to implement a £100,000 cap on donations from British citizens who live abroad.

Labour has sought to attack Reform over its links to crypto traders. An attack ad released on Facebook earlier this year asked: “Are Reform the party of the people? Or the party of crypto billionaires?”