LONDON — David Cameron earned about $10 million from finance firm Greensill Capital before the company’s collapse, according to documents leaked to the BBC.
The former British prime minister was due to be paid $4.5 million after tax for a tranche of Greensill shares, according to a letter from the firm to Cameron obtained by the BBC Panorama program.
Cameron also received a salary of $1 million a year as a part-time adviser and was paid a bonus of $700,000 in 2019, the broadcaster reported. In total, the program alleges the documents suggest he made around $10 million before tax for two-and-a-half years’ part-time work.
The former Conservative leader has been at the center of Britain’s biggest lobbying scandal in a generation after it emerged he pressed senior ministers and officials to include Greensill Capital in a coronavirus lending scheme.
Following Greensill’s collapse in March, which left 3,000 jobs at a steel manufacturer at risk, investigations have been opened into the company’s activities in the U.K., Germany and elsewhere. The former prime minister was cleared of breaking lobbying rules but a cross-party group of MPs found he had demonstrated a “significant lack of judgment.”
The BBC reported it has not seen Cameron’s signed acceptance of the offer, but the letter states that he had already agreed to the deal.
Cameron’s spokesman told the BBC that the former prime minister’s remuneration was a private matter. “He acted in good faith at all times and there was no wrongdoing in any of the actions he took,” the spokesman is quoted as saying.
Deputy leader of the opposition Labour Party, Angela Rayner, said it was “utterly ludicrous” that Cameron had made such a large sum. “The fact that David Cameron was cleared of any wrongdoing proves that the rules that are supposed to regulate lobbying are completely unfit for purpose. It’s created a Wild West where the Conservatives think it’s one rule for them and another for everyone else.”