IS "NEXT TORY LEADER" JENRICK ON THE TAKE?

Tory Party leadership frontrunner Robert Jenrick has some questions to answer after it was revealed that he has pocketed at least £75,000 of "dark money" from what appears to a chain of shell companies traced back to the British Virgin Islands, a notorious money laundering and tax-avoidance centre. 

As reported by "slow news" site The Tortoise:

The Conservative leadership contender Robert Jenrick has accepted £75,000 in donations from an indebted company, which received an undisclosed lump sum from an untraceable BVI-listed entity.

The Spott Fitness has no employees, has never made a profit, and its most recent accounts show it owes £332,000, raising questions about the ultimate source of the funds.

In February this year the company accepted a loan from Centrovalli, a firm based in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. The amount borrowed has not been declared, but typically these corporate loans are made against assets. In this case, it is unclear what assets the company has.

The documents state that a company called Saffron Group acted as a director for Centrovalli. Saffron Group is a high-end tax specialist that offers services for clients in Switzerland, the BVI, Hong Kong and Israel.

Moshe Freed, one of the principals at Saffron Group’s parent company Intertax, is named as the sole director of a now-defunct firm also called Centrovalli Ltd, which is registered in the UK.

But it's not just the money that is dark. Janrick, who is of Welsh ancestry, has an American Jewish wife who is raising his children in the Jewish tradition, but has recently been campaigning hard on his "English identity."