Goggle-eyed at his own deception? Aid fat cat in Parliament...
IT IS an extraordinary picture. In a wood-panelled committee room in the heart of the House of Commons, Peter Young, Adam Smith International’s director of strategy, looked amazed as I submitted evidence to MPs savaging foreign aid fat cats like him, and questioning how much he had earned over the last decade in salary, bonuses and pensions.
The subject under discussion at the International Development Committee was whether the Government was frittering away taxpayers’ cash on such private contractors, creaming off millions meant for the world’s poorest people.
Little did the listening MPs know that Young was at the centre of a secret scheme to feed misleading evidence to their inquiry.
Sadly, Young declined to answer my query, although his chunky salary figure would be well into seven figures, given that in one year alone he paid himself a dividend of £800,000.
Under his guidance, ASI has become the dominant specialist private deliverer of British aid, driving up profits and margins on the back of the great British aid giveaway.
My exposé in the MoS earlier this year that prompted the session in Westminster found ASI’s turnover soared from £72million to £111.7million in just two years. Profits after tax more than doubled from £6.8million in 2012 to £14.3million in 2014.
The firm’s parent company shared almost £1million pay among a small pool of directors, boosted by dividends of £440,885 paid to five of them. It previously paid one director a seven-figure sum in annual salary and bonuses, despite working in the poverty industry.
They do at least share the spoils with staff. According to its annual report, ASI pays its 105 employees an impressive average salary of £69,425 a year, despite more than doubling numbers in two years.
Young has been at the firm since it was founded in 1992. Sources say he is the brains behind the company’s ascent.
A controversial former head of the Federation of Conservative Students, Young and his partners exploited the popularity of Thatcherism after the fall of the Berlin Wall by advising on economic and political reform in Eastern Europe. They soon saw lucrative opportunities in the swelling aid industry, expanding into Africa, Asia and Latin America as successive governments ramped up the foreign giveaway.
But success has led to criticism, with campaign group Global Justice alleging earlier this year that the Government was ‘lining the pockets of wealthy consultants’ by paying ASI to promote projects with ‘questionable’ benefits for the poor.