Billionaire property developer gave Tories £12k two weeks after Robert Jenrick gave plans go ahead

A billionaire property developer gave a five-figure sum to the Conservative Party a fortnight after the Housing Secretary unlawfully approved one of his schemes, it has been revealed.

Figures from the Electoral Commission show that Richard Desmond donated £12,000 to the party in January after Robert Jenrick gave the green light to his plan to build 1,500 homes in east London.

Mr Jenrick gave the last-minute go-ahead to the £1billion project after both the local council and the independent Planning Inspectorate had decided it should be refused.

His decision on January 14 came one day before Tower Hamlets Council approved a ‘community levy’ on developments that would have cost Mr Desmond’s company Northern and Shell between £30million and £50million.

After the council mounted a legal challenge in the High Court, Mr Jenrick accepted that his original decision had been ‘unlawful by reason of apparent bias’, quashed the decision and said he would take no further part in decisions about the application.

Electoral Commission records released yesterday show that Mr Desmond gave £12,000 to the Conservative Party on January 28, two weeks after Mr Jenrick’s approval. It was his first donation to the party since he gave £10,000 through Northern and Shell in September 2017.

Last month it was reported that Mr Desmond and Mr Jenrick sat on the same table at a Tory fundraising dinner last November, although the Housing Secretary has insisted that he refused to discuss the application.

Mr Desmond, who sold the Daily Express and Daily Star newspapers two years ago, wants to redevelop the former site of the Westferry Printworks on the Isle of Dogs as housing.

The proposal includes nine buildings of up to 36 storeys. Only 21 per cent of the development would have been affordable housing, significantly below the 35 per cent typically required.

The Conservative Party received the highest amount of donations in the first three months of this year compared with other major UK political parties, according to the Electoral Commission figures. It raised £4.04million, ahead of Labour with £3.88million, the Liberal Democrats with £1.27million and the Scottish National Party with £418,305.

Tory donors included the wife of one of Vladimir Putin’s former ministers who gave £325,000 in the first quarter of the year. 

Lubov Chernukhin, who is married to Vladimir Chernukhin, an ex-Russian deputy finance minister, made five separate donations.

One of the payments, for £45,000, is understood to be the winning bid she made at the party’s annual Black and White fundraising ball for a game of tennis with Boris Johnson.

The latest donations mean she has given £1.6million to the Tories in the past five years, making her the biggest female political donor in UK history.

The party has previously insisted that Mrs Chernukhin, now a British citizen, is not a ‘Putin crony’, but the money will raise fresh questions about Tory links to Russia just two years after the Salisbury spy poisoning.

In May last year, the Daily Mail revealed how Mrs Chernukhin had enjoyed a night out with Theresa May and six female members of her Cabinet after she bid a £135,000 for the dinner as an auction prize. 

She was entertained by the then prime minister at the five-star Goring Hotel in central London.

A Conservative Party spokesman said: ‘Government policy is in no way influenced by party donations – they are entirely separate.

‘Donations to the Conservative Party are properly and transparently declared to the Electoral Commission, published by them, and comply fully with the law.’