Who is Nadhim Zahawi? The child refugee turned multimillionaire politician sacked over his tax affairs
He is a former child refugee who sold Teletubbies merchandise, founded the UK’s best known polling company and was a contender to be leader of the Conservative Party.
But Nadhim Zahawi’s rise through the echelons of Westminster has been brought to an abrupt halt after he was sacked as Tory chairman over his tax affairs.
So how did the 55-year-old rise to be the toast of the Tories before being told by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak he had committed a “serious breach of the ministerial code”.
Follow reaction to Nadhim Zahawi’s sacking – live updates
Early years
Mr Zahawi was born in Bagdad, Iraq, and spent his early years growing up as part of an influential Kurdish family.
His father was a well-known businessman and his grandfather was the governor of the Central Bank of Iraq.
But after Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979, the dictator began to target the Kurds.
“It was clear to my family Iraq would not be safe under his leadership and that is when we decided we had to flee to the UK,” Mr Zahawi told his local newspaper, the Stratford Herald.
He arrived in the UK aged 11, unable to speak a word of English, and began his new life by going to Holland Park School in London.
Soon, his family moved him from a comprehensive education to private school, and he studied at both Ibstock Place School, Roehampton, and then King’s College School, Wimbledon, both in southwest London.
However, as he was set to go off to university, an investment by his father went belly up and the family lost everything, except for their Vauxhall car.
Mr Zahawi used the vehicle to become a minicab driver to contribute to the family finances, but his mother insisted he carry on studying and pawned her jewellery to cover the costs.
So off he went to University College London to study chemical engineering.
Business endeavours
After graduating in 1988, it was the world of business he wanted to pursue and he sought to echo his father’s example as an entrepreneur.
Like his father, it didn’t always go right – his setting up of a firm that sold Teletubbies merchandise ended as a “costly and painful mistake”, he later said.
But it did attract the attention and investment of Lord Jeffrey Archer – who once described him as a “born organiser” – and opened doors to the senior ranks of the Conservative Party.
Mr Zahawi became an aide to Lord Archer and in return, the peer helped with his own campaign to become a Tory councillor, winning a seat in the London borough of Wandsworth in 1994.
There was also a failed attempt to enter Parliament in 1997, when he competed for the new seat of Erith and Thamesmead amid a Labour landslide.
He helped with Lord Archer’s London mayoral campaign in 1998 too, but it was brought to an early close when the peer pulled out of the race amid controversy.
It was the turn of the millennium that signalled another change in Mr Zahawi’s fortunes when, alongside another former aide of Lord Archer’s, Stephan Shakespeare, he founded polling company YouGov.
The business grew and grew, and within five years it was floated on the stock market valued at £18m.
He would later tell Sky News he was “the beneficiary of the British dream“.
According to the Evening Standard, Mr Zahawi cashed in £1.2m of shares in 2005, and went on to work as the firm’s CEO for a further five years.
But having made his fortune, he set his sights firmly back on the world of politics and, in 2010, he was elected as the MP for Stratford-upon-Avon.
Mr Zahawi became an MP at the 2010 election.
Masters Of Nothing
A year later, with world still affected by the fallout from the 2008 recession, he co-authored a book with fellow MP Matt Hancock, titled Masters Of Nothing: How The Crash Will Happen Again Unless We Understand Human Nature.
He began to gain some recognition in the party, becoming part of the Number 10 policy unit advising the then prime minister David Cameron.
However, in this early part of his Commons career, he became more known to the public for his part in a 2013 expenses scandal, having claimed cash to power his horses’ stables.
It wasn’t until 2018 that Mr Zahawi was appointed into his first junior minister post – a parliamentary under secretary at the Department for Education – and a year later he was moved to the business department.
But he became a household name after COVID broke out in the UK and he was appointed by Boris Johnson to become the country’s vaccine minister, receiving widespread praise for his work in the Department of Health and Social Care to tackle the pandemic.
As vaccines minister, Mr Zahawi became a household name.
‘Do the right thing and go’
The performance propelled him to cabinet and in September 2021, he took his first secretary of state post, back in the Department for Education.
The chaos that ensued the following year as Mr Johnson’s downfall played out in public saw him pushed up the ranks again, replacing Rishi Sunak as chancellor in Number 11 after his dramatic resignation.
But two days later, Mr Zahawi joined the growing horde of ministers calling for the PM to step down, telling Mr Johnson: “You must do the right thing and go now.”
A vacancy was created at the top, and he threw his hat in the ring to become the next Tory leader and next prime minister.
Giving his first broadcast campaign interview to Sky News, Mr Zahawi promised that under his control, the government would reduce corporation tax, income tax and national insurance.
But the issue of his own finances was brought to the fore after reports his tax affairs had been investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, the National Crime Agency and HMRC.
‘I was clearly being smeared’
“I was clearly being smeared,” he told Kay Burley. “I’m not aware of this. I’ve always declared my taxes – I’ve paid my taxes in the UK. I will answer any questions HMRC has of me.
“But I will go further. I will make a commitment today, that if I am prime minister the right thing to do is publish my accounts annually. That is the right thing to do because we need to take this issue off the table.”
Mr Zahawi didn’t make it through the first round of balloting, and instead threw his backing behind Liz Truss.
After failing to make it further in the Tory leadership contest, Mr Zahawi gave his backing to Liz Truss.
He carried on in the Treasury until Ms Truss took the keys to Number 10, but was dealt a demotion in her cabinet, instead becoming Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, minister for intergovernmental relations and minister for equalities.
As we know, this premiership was not to last long, and weeks later – under Rishi Sunak – Mr Zahawi was made chairman of the Tory Party.
A seven-figure sum
But those questions raised over the summer regarding his taxes were soon to resurface again.
In January 2023, The Sun On Sunday published a report claiming Mr Zahawi had paid a seven-figure sum to settle a dispute with HMRC over the sales of his YouGov shares.
Sky News made several attempts in the following days to get Mr Zahawi to confirm or deny the story, but his team refused, instead saying his tax affairs “were and are fully up to date and are paid in the UK”.
Mr Sunak stood by him during Prime Minister’s Questions that week, but by the weekend, the swirl of questions was growing by the hour.
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Zahawi admits tax settlement
‘Careless not deliberate error’
Mr Zahawi released a statement saying he paid what HMRC said “was due” after it “disagreed about the exact allocation” of shares in YouGov.
The Tory chairman said this was a “careless and not a deliberate error” and didn’t confirm if any penalty was also levied.
But Sky News understands that, as part of a settlement with HMRC, Mr Zahawi paid a penalty to the tax collector.
The exact size of the settlement has not been disclosed, but it is reported to be an estimated £4.8m including a 30% penalty.
Mr Sunak had ordered a potentially far-reaching investigation into Mr Zahawi to be conducted by the PM’s new ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus.
But the prime minister initally resisted calls to sack Mr Zahawi, saying he retained “confidence” in his colleague.
But in a letter published on Sunday morning, Mr Sunak said an ethics inquiry into the handling of his tax affairs found a “serious breach” of the ministerial code.
He added: “As a result, I have informed you of my decision to remove you from your position in His Majesty’s government.”
World
Two security workers injured after grenades thrown at aid site, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says
Two American security workers in Gaza were injured after grenades were thrown during food distribution in Khan Younis, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has said.
In a statement, the US and Israeli-backed aid group said a targeted terrorist attack was carried out at one of its sites in southern Gaza on Saturday morning.
The two Americans injured “are receiving medical treatment and are in stable condition,” it said, adding that the delivery of aid was “otherwise successful” and that “no local aid workers or civilians were harmed”.
GHF didn’t say exactly when the incident happened but claimed Hamas was behind the attack, adding: “GHF has repeatedly warned of credible threats from Hamas, including explicit plans to target American personnel, Palestinian aid workers, and the civilians who rely on our sites for food.
“Today’s attack tragically affirms those warnings.”
Later, the aid group posted a picture on social media, which it said showed “fragments of a grenade packed with ball bearings” that was used in the attack.
Asked by Sky’s US partner network, NBC News, whether the two injured individuals were responsible for handing out aid or were responsible for providing security, GHF said they were “American security workers” and “two American veterans.”
The aid group did not provide specific evidence that Hamas was behind the attack.
The US and Israeli-backed group has been primarily responsible for aid distribution since Israel lifted its 11-week blockade of the Gaza Strip in May.
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It comes after Sky News analysis showed GHF aid distributions are associated with a significant increase in deaths in Gaza.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, 600 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid from GHF sites as of 3 July, which charities and the UN have branded “death traps”.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press has reported that Israeli-backed American contractors guarding GHF aid centres in Gaza are using live ammunition and stun grenades.
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Contractors allege colleagues ‘fired on Palestinians’
GHF has vehemently denied the accusations, adding that it investigated AP’s allegations and found them to be “categorically false”.
Israel’s military added that it fires only warning shots and is investigating reports of civilian harm.
It denies deliberately shooting at any innocent civilians and says it’s examining how to reduce “friction with the population” in the areas surrounding the distribution centres.
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.”
A woman cries after her son was killed while on his way to an aid distribution centre. Pic: AP/Jehad Alshrafi
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.
An Israeli army tank advances in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel. Pic: AP/Leo Correa
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.
Palestinians dispersing away from tear gas fired at an aid distribution site in Gaza. Pic: AP
A girl mourns the loss of her father, who was killed while heading to an aid distribution hub. Pic: AP/Jehad Alshrafi
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.
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GHF reacts to claims US contractors fired at Palestinians
Deaths in Gaza rise significantly when GHF distributes aid
Palestinians carry aid packages near the GHF distribution centre in Khan Younis. Pic: AP/Abdel Kareem Hana
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.
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.
Dr Bahbah negotiating with Hamas for the release of Edan Alexander
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.
Dr Bahbah and Trump
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.
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Will Trump achieve a Gaza ceasefire?
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.
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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open
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.
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President shares ‘Trump Gaza’ AI video
“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.
Letter from Abbas to Trump. Pic: Bishara Bahbah
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.”
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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.
Read more from Sky News:
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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.
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Doctors on the frontline
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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