Donor’s assets of £14m frozen after alleged fraud
A Conservative Party donor who funded Rishi Sunak’s private jet travel has had his global assets frozen after being accused of fraud.
Akhil Tripathi is facing a string of court cases from a number of former business partners over alleged fraudulent share dealings.
The entrepreneur, who made millions by inventing an anti-snoring device, paid for Mr Sunak’s private jet travel worth £38,500 to Tory events in April last year.
i has previously reported two separate High Court actions brought against Mr Tripathi in connection with the sale of shares to his sister, when he was chief executive of Signifier Medical Technologies (SMT).
A third separate case has been lodged against the sleep guru, which has resulted in his global assets being frozen.
The Prime Minister is facing questions from Labour over the donation from Mr Tripathi, who has also donated more than £150,000 to the Conservative Party since 2021.
Mr Sunak used a £38,500 donation from Mr Tripathi to fund an Embraer Legacy 500 jet to fly him and his entourage of eight staff to the Scottish and Welsh Conservative conferences on 28 April last year.
In the new case a group of investors won an injunction to freeze Mr Tripathi’s global assets worth £14.3m at a closed court hearing on 26 March. Freezing of assets puts a legal block on debit transactions and the sale of property and shares.
The freeze was granted after the investors, led by Kieran Gallahue, the co-founder of medical company Atmas Health, claimed that Mr Tripathi had deceived them into buying £3.5m of shares that he claimed were being sold for the benefit of another shareholder, Silvie Kent.
The claimants say they later discovered that Mr Tripathi “ultimately received almost all of the proceeds of the share sales from Ms Kent” and that they would have not purchased the shares had they known the true beneficiary, which they claim were procured by “Mr Tripathi’s deceit, or at the very least his negligence”, according to court documents.
Mr Tripathi’s legal team has requested more time to submit their client’s defence.
Neither the Prime Minister nor the Conservative Party would answer questions about the donations, but a spokesman at the party’s headquarters said: “Donations to the Conservative Party are properly and transparently declared to the Electoral Commission.”
Last April, Mr Tripathi was pictured smiling outside No 10 during a visit to Downing Street.