London, 23 Jan: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday ordered an independent investigation into the tax affairs of scandal-hit Conservative Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi amid mounting pressure from the Opposition.
\nAfter days of headlines over the Iraqi-born minister without portfolio in his Cabinet’s alleged penalty settlement with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) department, Sunak said there were “questions that need answering” in the case which his independent ethics advisor will be looking into.
\nThe issue has domin-ated the news agenda for his government in recent days, with the Opposition Labour Party demanding that Zahawi, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, be sacked.
\n“Integrity and accounta-bility is really important to me and clearly in this case there are questions that need answering,” Sunak told reporters during a visit to a hospital in Northampton-shire in eastern England.
\n“That’s why I’ve asked our independent adviser to get to the bottom of everything, to investigate the matter fully and establish all the facts and provide advice to me on Nadhim Zahawi’s compliance with the ministerial code,” he said.
\nIn response, Zahawi said he welcomed the investigation and looked forward to “explaining the facts of this issue” to Sir Laurie Magnus the UK Prime Minister’s Indepen-dent Adviser on Ministers Interests.
\n“In order to ensure the independence of this process, you will understand that it would be inappropriate to discuss this issue any further, as I continue my duties as chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party,” said Zahawi.
\nThe minister has insisted he “acted properly throug-hout” and any tax error was due to being “careless” and not deliberate.
\nLabour’s shadow busi-ness secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the issue undermines the public confidence in the political system. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
London, 23 Jan: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday ordered an independent investigation into the tax affairs of scandal-hit Conservative Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi amid mounting pressure from the Opposition. After days of headlines over the Iraqi-born minister without portfolio in his Cabinet’s alleged penalty settlement with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) department, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-209387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}