UK security officials raised concerns about a visit to Iraq by under-fire Conservative Party Chairman Nadhim Zahawi during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter.
(Bloomberg) — UK security officials raised concerns about a visit to Iraq by under-fire Conservative Party Chairman Nadhim Zahawi during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter.
Zahawi flew to Iraqi Kurdistan — where he has family and has had business interests in the past — at a time when he was the UK minister in charge of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout. While the exact dates of the visit remain unclear, Zahawi held that role from November 2020 to September 2021.
Now a cabinet minister without portfolio as well as chairman of the ruling Tories, Zahawi is currently facing a probe into his finances after it emerged that he was “careless” with his tax affairs.
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While in Iraq, Zahawi used his government-issued laptop to log in to his work email account, triggering an alert among security officials back in the UK, the people said. They asked not to be named discussing a matter that isn’t public.
Their concerns were shared with senior government officials who asked Zahawi why he was in Iraq, the people familiar said. He told them he was on holiday meeting his family.
A spokesman for Zahawi said the minister “was born in Iraq, and visited family in Iraqi Kurdistan during a short holiday, when it was legal to do so.”
Kurdistan is an oil-rich, semi-autonomous region of northern Iraq and the site of an ongoing conflict between neigboring Turkey and Kurdish militants.
A person close to Zahawi confirmed the government’s IT security department asked why there was a login from Iraq registered on his official laptop.
The person said that Zahawi informed officials about the holiday before leaving the UK, and that there were no rules preventing him from taking his laptop with him. They added that he had no business meetings or conversations during the trip.
Zahawi is fighting for his political future after conceding at the weekend that he’d been “careless” with his taxes and had settled a retroactive bill with the country’s tax collector.
The now-Tory party chairman acknowledged settling a bill with His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. That totaled £4.8 million ($5.9 million), including a 30% penalty for not settling the correct amount at the right time, a person familiar with the matter confirmed earlier this week. The settlement took place while Zahawi was Chancellor of the Exchequer in mid-2022.
Zahawi has so far refused to step down, though UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has ordered an ethics inquiry into his behavior. Sunak told the House of Commons on Wednesday that Zahawi is entitled to “due process” — while suggesting the easy option would have been to fire him. On Thursday he reiterated again that he would wait for the verdict of the probe.
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