Rees-Mogg ‘must come clean over £6m loans’

JACOB REES-MOGG is facing calls for a standards probe for failing to declare that he has benefited from £6million in cheap loans from his offshore-linked company.

Mr Rees-Mogg borrowed up to £2.94m a year in “director’s loans” from his firm Saliston Ltd between 2018 and 2020.

Although it does not specifically identify director’s loans, the MP’s code of conduct requires directors to declare “taxable expenses, allowances and benefits”.

The Leader of the House of Commons stated that he was an “unremunerated director” and shareholder of the firm but did not mention he had taken out the loans.

By using director’s loans he was able to borrow the large sum at very low interest rates.

UK company Saliston Ltd has previously been described as a

“holding company” by

Mr ReesMogg, with

£8m property assets, understood to include a Mayfair house. LOW INTEREST

Saliston also Jacob Rees-Mogg has a stake in Mr Rees-Mogg’s asset management firm Somerset Capital Management LLP, the offshore parent firm of Somerset Capital Management (Cayman) Ltd.

He paid just £48,945 in interest to Saliston on £6m of loans over three years, a rate of just 0.8%.

Mr Rees-Mogg was one of three founding members of investment management firm Somerset Capital Management LLP in 2007.

He said his £6m in loans were not earnings, so he was not required to declare them to Parliament and he had not broken any rules.

He told the Mail on Sunday that the 2018 loan was “primarily” used to buy and refurbish his £5.6m home in Westminster and added: “All loans have either been repaid with interest in accordance with HMRC rules or paid as dividends and taxed accordingly.”

But Thangam Debbonaire, Shadow Leader of the Commons, has called on Mr Rees-Mogg to “come clean” about his interests and called on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone to investigate.

Mr Debbonaire said: “This would appear to be yet another egregious breach of the rules. A Cabinet minister failing to declare millions in additional income is unacceptable.”