Boris Johnson told to stop asking Richard Sharp for financial advice days before he was made BBC chair – reports

Published

2 years ago

January 29, 2023

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Boris Johnson was reportedly told to stop asking Richard Sharp for “advice” about his “personal financial matters” just days before he was announced as the new BBC chairman.

Mr Johnson, who was prime minister at the time, was warned by officials to stop discussing his financial arrangements with Mr Sharp on 22 December 2020, according to The Sunday Times.

Mr Sharp was due to be announced as BBC chair on 6 January 2021.

The former banker has been facing calls to stand down as BBC chairman after it emerged that in late 2020 he had introduced Sam Blyth to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case to discuss whether Mr Blyth, a distant cousin of Mr Johnson whom Mr Sharp has known for more than 40 years, could act as a guarantor for a loan facility for the prime minister.

Mr Sharp previously said that he will remain in place, with the BBC chairman due to be grilled by MPs on the controversy next month.

A spokesperson for the former prime minister said Mr Sharp has “never given any financial advice to Boris Johnson, nor has Mr Johnson sought any financial advice from him”.

They added: “Neither Mr Johnson nor anyone acting on his behalf was ever aware that Sam Blyth was being considered for any role at the British Council, nor did Mr Johnson have any discussions with Sam Blyth or anyone else about any such role.

“Neither Mr Johnson nor anyone acting on his behalf spoke to anyone in the FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) regarding Mr Blyth for any public appointment.”

The spokesperson said that “throughout this process, as the material The Sunday Times has obtained demonstrates, Mr Johnson followed advice and took the necessary steps to ensure probity. All declarations were made properly”.

Timeline

November 2020:
According to the Sunday Times the loan guarantee was first suggested by Canadian millionaire Sam Blyth during a dinner with Richard Sharp.

Early December 2020:
In early December, Richard Sharp put Sam Blyth in contact with the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case.

Late 2020:
Before the end of the year, Richard Sharp and Sam Blyth met with Boris Johnson for dinner at his country residence, Chequers. They insist the prime minister’s finances were not discussed.

January 2021:
At the start of January, the government announced Richard Sharp as the preferred candidate to be BBC chairman.

The newspaper, citing a leaked Cabinet Office memo, said advice was issued by top civil servant Mr Case after Mr Johnson and Mr Sharp sought out advice on accepting the £800,000 loan from Mr Blyth.

Mr Johnson reportedly secured the loan in February 2021.

The paper quotes advice issued by Mr Case, which stated: “Given the imminent announcement of Richard Sharp as the new BBC chair, it is important that you no longer ask his advice about your personal financial matters.”

Public appointments commissioner William Shawcross has already said that he plans to investigate Mr Sharp’s appointment as BBC chairman, following the first set of reports last week.

Chairman of the BBC – What is the role?

The Chairman of the BBC is the head of the BBC board – on a salary of £160,000.

They are responsible for maintaining the independence of the BBC while overseeing the functioning of the corporation to fulfill its mission.

The chairman is also in charge of the process for appointing the director-general and can dismiss the person in this role. They also act as the corporation’s most senior representative to Parliament and the government, including the devolved administrations.

Speaking to Sky News yesterday, Roger Mosey, a former head of TV news at the BBC, said it was a job with “two directions”.

He said while it is “the most important role for the accountability of the BBC to the public”, it is not one which is involved in the BBC’s journalism.

But Mr Mosey pointed out that it is not uncommon for the chair to be a political appointment and that this is “nothing new”.

Mr Sharp told BBC News last week he was “comfortable” with the way the process had been carried out.

The paper also reports that Mr Blyth had appeared on a Foreign Office list of four recommended candidates during the search for the chief executive of the British Council, with his family ties to Mr Johnson not revealed to senior figures at the council.

Mr Blyth told the paper he ruled himself out on 7 December 2020 and did not formally apply.

“I believe my name may have been suggested by civil servants who were trying to identify potential candidates at the search stage of the appointment process,” he said.

Liberal Democrat chief whip Wendy Chamberlain called on the government to publish Mr Johnson’s internal register of interests.

She said: “How can Johnson claim that Richard Sharp knew nothing of his personal finances when he was explicitly told by officials to stop asking for his financial advice?

“The public are sick of these endless lies and Conservative cover-ups. This government must come clean and publish all relevant documents, including Boris Johnson’s internal register of interests, so we can get to the bottom of this.”

Mr Sharp said last week that “having had a discussion with the cabinet secretary about avoiding conflict, and the perception of conflict, I felt comfortable and I still feel there was no conflict because at that stage what I was seeking to do was ensure that the process was followed exactly by the book, and that the process hadn’t started, of any kind, in terms of any support that Sam (Blyth) was going to provide to the prime minister”.

“I had clarified and agreed with the cabinet secretary, both of us had the judgment that I’d avoided a conflict or a perception of conflict.”

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “We do not comment on leaks.”

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Hamas gives ‘positive’ response to ceasefire proposal but asks for amendments

Published

51 mins ago

July 5, 2025

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Hamas gives 'positive' response to ceasefire proposal but asks for amendments

Hamas has said it has “submitted its positive response” to the latest proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza to mediators.

The proposal for a 60-day ceasefire was presented by US President Donald Trump, who has been pushing hard for a deal to end the fighting in Gaza, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set to visit the White House next week to discuss a deal.

Mr Trump said Israel had agreed to his proposed ceasefire terms, and he urged Hamas to accept the deal as well.

Hamas’ “positive” response to the proposal had slightly different wording on three issues around humanitarian aid, the status of the Israeli Defence Forces inside Gaza and the language around guarantees beyond the 60-day ceasefire, a source with knowledge of the negotiations revealed.

But the source told Sky News: “Things are looking good.”

Hamas said it is “fully prepared to immediately enter into a round of negotiations regarding the mechanism for implementing this framework” without elaborating on what needed to be worked out in the proposal’s implementation.

The US said during the ceasefire it would “work with all parties to end the war”.

A Hamas official said on condition of anonymity that the truce could start as early as next week.

But he added that talks were needed first to establish how many Palestinian prisoners would be released in return for each freed Israeli hostage and to specify the amount of humanitarian aid that will be allowed to enter Gaza during the ceasefire.

He said negotiations on a permanent ceasefire and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in return for the release of the remaining hostages would start on the first day of the truce.

Hamas has been seeking guarantees that the 60-day ceasefire would lead to a total end to the nearly 21-month-old war, which caused previous rounds of negotiations to fail as Mr Netanyahu has insisted that Israel would continue fighting in Gaza to ensure the destruction of Hamas.

The Hamas official said that Mr Trump has guaranteed that the ceasefire will extend beyond 60 days if necessary to reach a peace deal, but there is no confirmation from the US of such a guarantee.

Speaking to journalists on Air Force One, Mr Trump welcomed Hamas’s “positive spirit” to the proposal, adding that there could be a ceasefire deal by next week.

Hamas also said it wants more aid to flow through the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies, which comes as the UN human rights officer said it recorded 613 Palestinians killed in Gaza within a month while trying to obtain aid.

Most of them were said to have been killed while trying to reach food distribution points by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

The spokeswoman for the UN human rights office, Ravina Shamdasani, said the agency was not able to attribute responsibility for the killings, but added that “it is clear that the Israeli military has shelled and shot at Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points” operated by GHF.

Ms Shamdasani said that of the total tallied, 509 killings were “GHF-related”, meaning at or near its distribution sites.

The GHF accused the UN of taking its casualty figures “directly from the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry” and of trying “to falsely smear our effort”, which echoed statements to Sky News by the executive director of GHF, Johnnie Moore.

Mr Moore called the UN figures a “disinformation campaign” that is “meant to shut down our efforts” in the Gaza Strip.

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Gaza: The man in the room acting as backchannel for Hamas in negotiations with US

Published

51 mins ago

July 5, 2025

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Gaza: The man in the room acting as backchannel for Hamas in negotiations with US

Behind the efforts to secure the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release is the remarkable story of one man’s unlikely involvement.

His name is Bishara Bahbah, he’s a Harvard-educated economics professor from Phoenix, Arizona.

In April, his phone rang. It was Hamas.

Since that phone call, Dr Bahbah has been living temporarily in Qatar where he is in direct contact with officials from Hamas. He has emerged as an important back-channel American negotiator. But how?

An inauguration party

I first met Dr Bahbah in January. It was the eve of President Trump’s inauguration and a group of Arab-Americans had thrown a party at a swanky restaurant in Washington DC’s Wharf district.

There was a sense of excitement. Arab-Americans were crediting themselves for having helped Trump over the line in the key swing state of Michigan.

Despite traditionally being aligned with the Democrats, Arab-Americans had abandoned Joe Biden in large numbers because of his handling of the Gaza war.

I’d reported from Michigan weeks earlier and been struck by the overwhelming support for Trump. The vibe essentially was ‘it can’t get any worse – we may as well give Trump a shot’.

Mingling among diplomats from Middle Eastern countries, wealthy business owners and even the president of FIFA, I was introduced to an unassuming man in his late 60s.

We got talking and shared stories of his birthplace and my adopted home for a few years – Jerusalem.

He told me that he still has the deed to his family’s 68 dunum (16 acre) Palestinian orchard.

With nostalgia, he explained how he still had his family’s UN food card which shows their allocated monthly rations from their time living in a refugee camp and in the Jerusalem’s old city.

Dr Bahnah left Jerusalem in 1976. He is now a US citizen but told me Jerusalem would always be home.

He echoed the views I had heard in Michigan, where he had spent many months campaigning as the president of Arab-Americans for Trump.

He dismissed my scepticism that Trump would be any better than Biden for the Palestinians.

We exchanged numbers and agreed to meet for lunch a few weeks later.

A connection with Trump

Dr Bahbah invited two Arab-American friends to our lunch. Over burgers and coke, a block from the White House, we discussed their hopes for Gaza under Trump.

The three men repeated what I had heard on the campaign trail – that things couldn’t get any worse for the Palestinians than they were under Biden.

Trump, they said, would use his pragmatism and transactional nature to create opportunities.

Dr Bahbah displayed to me his own initiative too. He revealed that he got a message to the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, to suggest he ought to write a personal letter of congratulations to President Trump.

A letter from Ramallah was on the Oval Office desk on 6 November, a day after the election. It’s the sort of gesture Trump notices.

It was clear to me that the campaigning efforts and continued support of these three wealthy men had been recognised by the Trump administration.

They had become close to key figures in Trump’s team – connections that would, in time, pay off.

There were tensions along the way. When Trump announced he would “own Gaza”, Dr Bahbah was disillusioned.

And then came the AI video of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunning themselves in a Gazan wonderland.

“It is provocative and unacceptable,” he told me just after the president posted the video in February.

Trump must have thought it was funny, so he posted it. He loves anything with his name on it.”

Then came the Trump plan to resettle Palestinians out of Gaza. To this, he released a public statement titled Urgent Press Release.

“Arab-Americans for Trump firmly rejects President Donald J Trump’s suggestion to remove – voluntarily or forcibly – Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt and Jordan,” he said.

He then changed the name of his alliance, dropping Trump. It became Arab-Americans for Peace.

I wondered if the wheels were coming off this unlikely alliance.

Was he realising Trump couldn’t or wouldn’t solve the Palestinian issue? But Dr Bahbah maintained faith in the new president.

“I am worried, but at the same time, Trump might be testing the waters to determine what is acceptable…,” he told me in late February as the war dragged on.

“There is no alternative to the two-state solution.”

He told me that he expected the president and his team to work on the rebuilding of Gaza and work to launch a process that would culminate in the establishment of a Palestinian state, side by side in peace with Israel.

It was, and remains, an expectation at odds with the Trump administration’s official policy.

The phone call

In late April, Dr Bahbah’s phone rang. The man at the other end of the line was Dr Ghazi Hamad, a senior member of Hamas.

Dr Bahbah and Dr Hamad had never met – they did not know each other.

But Hamas had identified Dr Bahbah as the Palestinian-American with the most influence in Trump’s administration.

Dr Hamad suggested that they could work together – to secure the release of all the hostages in return for a permanent ceasefire.

Hamas was already using the Qatari government as a conduit to the Americans but Dr Bahbah represented a second channel through which they hoped they could convince President Trump to increase pressure on Israel.

There is a thread of history which runs through this story. It was the widow of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who passed Dr Bahbah’s number to Dr Hamad.

In the 1990s, Dr Bahbah was part of a Palestinian delegation to the multilateral peace talks.

He became close to Arafat but he had no experience of a negotiation as delicate and intractable as this.

The first step was to build trust. Dr Bahbah contacted Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy.

Witkoff and Bahbah had something in common – one a real-estate mogul, the other an academic, neither had any experience in diplomacy. It represented the perfect manifestation of Trump’s ‘outside the box’ methods.

But Witkoff was sceptical of Dr Bahbah’s proposal at first. Could he really have any success at securing agreement between Israel and Hamas? A gesture to build trust was necessary.

Bahbah claims he told his new Hamas contact that they needed to prove to the Trump administration that they were serious about negotiating.

Within weeks a remarkable moment more than convinced Dr Bahbah and Witkoff that this new Hamas back-channel could be vitally important.

On 12 May, after 584 days in Hamas captivity, Israeli-American Edan Alexander was released.

We were told at the time that his release was a result of a direct deal between Hamas and the US.

Israel was not involved and the deal was described by Hamas as a “good faith” gesture. Dr Bahbah sees it as his deal.

Direct talks took place between Dr Bahbah and five Hamas officials in Doha who would then convey messages back to at least 17 other Hamas leadership figures in both Gaza and Cairo.

Dr Bahbah in turn conveyed Hamas messages back to Witkoff who was not directly involved in the Hamas talks.

A Qatari source told me that Dr Bahbah was “very involved” in the negotiations.

But publicly, the White House has sought to downplay his role, with an official telling Axios in May that “he was involved but tangentially”.

The Israeli government was unaware of his involvement until their own spies discovered the backchannel discussion about the release of Alexander.

Since that April phone call, Dr Bahbah has remained in the Qatari capital, with trips to Cairo, trying to help secure a final agreement.

He is taking no payment from anyone for his work.

As he told me when we first met back in January: “If I can do something to help to end this war and secure a future for the Palestinian people, I will.”

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Inside Iran’s notorious Evin Prison – as Tehran says damage shows Israel targeted civilians

Published

19 hours ago

July 4, 2025

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Inside Iran's notorious Evin Prison - as Tehran says damage shows Israel targeted civilians

It is one of the most notorious and secret places in Iran.

Somewhere foreign journalists are never allowed to visit or film. The prison where dissidents and critics of Iran’s government disappear – some never to be seen again.

But we went there today, invited by Iranian authorities eager to show the damage done there by Israel.

Evin Prison was hit by Israeli airstrikes the day before a ceasefire ended a 12-day war with Iran. The damage is much greater than thought at the time.

We walked through what’s left of its gates, now a mass of rubble and twisted metal, among just a handful of foreign news media allowed in.

A few hundred yards in, we were shown a building Iranians say was the prison’s hospital.

Behind iron bars, every one of the building’s windows had been blown in. Medical equipment and hospital beds had been ripped apart and shredded.

It felt eerie being somewhere normally shut off to the outside world.

On the hill above us, untouched by the airstrikes, the buildings where inmates are incarcerated in reportedly horrific conditions, ominous watch towers silhouetted against the sky.

Evin felt rundown and neglected. There was something ineffably sad and oppressive about the atmosphere as we wandered through the compound.

The Iranians had their reasons to bring us here. The authorities say at least 71 people were killed in the air strikes, some of them inmates, but also visiting family members.

Iran says this is evidence that Israel was not just targeting military or nuclear sites but civilian locations too.

But the press visit highlighted the prison’s notoriety too.

Iran’s critics and human rights groups say Evin is synonymous with the brutal oppression of political prisoners and opponents, and its practice of hostage diplomacy too.

British dual nationals, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe were held here for years before being released in 2022 in exchange for concessions from the UK.

Interviewed about the Israeli airstrikes at the time, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe showed only characteristic empathy with her former fellow inmates. Trapped in their cells, she said they must have been terrified.

The Israelis have not fully explained why they put Evin on their target list, but on the same day, the Israeli military said it was “attacking regime targets and government repression bodies in the heart of Tehran”.

The locus of their strikes were the prison’s two entrances. If they were trying to enable a jailbreak, they failed. No one is reported to have escaped, several inmates are thought to have died.

The breaches the Israeli missiles made in the jail’s perimeter are being closed again quickly. We filmed as a team of masons worked to shut off the outside world again, brick by brick.