Pressure is growing on Nadhim Zahawi to reveal the source of almost £30m of loans to the property investment company he founded with his wife Lana Saib.
The couple founded Zahawi & Zahawi in June 2010 and over the past five years there has been a sharp increase in what the group terms “other creditors”, which account for £29.8m of the company’s £52m of borrowings.
While Mr Zahawi stood down as a director of the company in January 2018, but Ms Saib continues to control the company and the couple’s twin sons Ahmad and Jaafar Shanshal are also directors of the firm.
The company’s latest available accounts for the year to the end of June 2021 identify two of the “other creditors” as two other property firms controlled by Ms Saib.
Zahawi Brierley Hill Ltd accounts for £925,071 of the lending, while Zahawi Wantage Ltd is owed £564,481.
These identified loans account for almost £1.5m, leaving more than £28.3m where the source of the lending remains secret.
Mr Zahawi is at the centre of a tax storm over a payout of around £27m he is alleged to have received from an offshore trust.
Dan Neidle, the lawyer who uncovered the tax issues facing Mr Zahawi, told i: “£30m of unsecured real estate loans don’t come from a normal lender such as a bank. Banks don’t lend like that.
“It likely comes from someone with personal connections to Mr Zahawi.
“It seems quite wrong that an MPs family can owe £30m to someone, on uncommercial terms, and we have no way of finding out who that is.”
Mr Zahawi has insisted that so-called founder shares from YouGov, the polling firm he co-founded in 2000, were held by Balshore Investments, a company based in the tax haven of Gibraltar that is owned by his father.
It has been claimed that Balshore subsequently sold its shares for a return of about £27m by 2018. If Mr Zahawi was the beneficiary of that transaction, he would have owed tax on the payout.
Mr Neidle added: “The Parliamentary Standards people say there’s no requirement to disclose loans and gifts to an MP’s company. I’m a tax lawyer, and I know a loophole when I see one. That’s an enormous loophole.”
Mr Zahawi was asked by i where the undisclosed “other creditors” in Zahawi & Zahawi were, and whether he was one, and if there had been any lending from individuals or businesses based overseas.
No comment from Mr Zahawi had been made at the time of publication.
This newspaper also contacted Richard Andrews, a solicitor who has acted for Zahawi & Zahawi on many of its lending deals with banks.
Mr Andrews, who is a partner at Kingston-Upon-Thames-based firm Sherwood Wheatley, had not responded at the time of publication.
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