How Mohamed Al Fayed left a lasting legacy on British politics with the ‘cash for questions’ scandal
Mohamed Al Fayed and “cash for questions” probably did more to bring about the downfall of John Major’s government than any of the other political scandals of the 1990s.
It was Al Fayed’s bribery of Tory MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith – in cash stuffed in brown envelopes – and hospitality at his luxury Ritz Hotel in Paris for cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken that led to the word “sleaze” being associated with the Major government.
It was almost certainly more damaging than the several sex scandals that engulfed Major’s government in the ’90s, because it involved financial impropriety and corruption and projected an image of dishonesty and Tory MPs on the take.
Hamilton was the Thatcherite MP for Tatton in the Cheshire stockbroker belt – a seat later represented by Tory chancellor George Osborne – and was made a junior minister at the Department of Trade and Industry, responsible for the City and corporate affairs, by Major after his surprise general election victory in 1992.
Neil Hamilton in 1994, while he was trade minister
But two years later, in 1994, it was revealed that he had taken cash for asking parliamentary questions on behalf of Al Fayed, along with Smith, who had been MP for Beaconsfield since defeating Tony Blair in a by-election in 1982.
Both MPs had failed to declare the donations from the Harrods tycoon.
It was to cost them their political careers and rob the Conservatives of one of their safest seats, Tatton, in the Blair landslide victory in 1997.
Al Fayed claimed he paid Hamilton up to £110,000 and also gave him Harrods gift vouchers and a free holiday at his Ritz Hotel in Paris, in return for asking parliamentary questions about Harrods during his battle for control of the store with Lonrho tycoon Tiny Rowland.
Smith – also a junior minister – was said to have received between £18,000 and £25,000, handed over in brown envelopes stuffed with £50 notes.
Mohamed Al Fayed in 1997
He quit straight away, but Hamilton battled on in a futile bid to clear his name.
Aitken, Major’s chief secretary to the Treasury and a former defence procurement minister, was revealed to have stayed without charge at the Ritz in Paris at the same time as Saudi arms dealers.
He sued for libel but was later convicted of perjury and served a jail term.
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Smith stood down from parliament in 1997 but Hamilton attempted to cling on in Tatton, but was comprehensively defeated by the so-called “man in the white suit”, anti-sleaze candidate Martin Bell, who was backed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
Jonathan Aitken in 1995
The hugely damaging scandal led Major to set up the Committee for Standards in Public Life, which is still operating, though criticised at times for being toothless.
But despite its critics, the committee remains a lasting legacy of the cash-for-questions scandal and advises prime ministers, civil servants and parliament to this day.
And the committee’s best-known former chairman, Sir Alastair Graham, who headed the committee from 2004 to 2007, remains a frequent critic of political scandals such as Boris Johnson’s Partygate.
Hamilton, whose notoriety led him and his extrovert wife Christine to become TV celebrities, later defected to Nigel Farage’s UKIP.
Aitken, on the other hand, turned to God in prison and is now an Anglican priest.
German law enforcement seized 34 million euros ($38 million) in cryptocurrency from eXch, a cryptocurrency platform allegedly used to launder funds stolen after Bybit’s record-breaking $1.4 billion hack.
The seizure, announced on May 9 by Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and Frankfurt’s main prosecutor’s office, involved multiple crypto assets, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Dash (DASH). The move marks the third-largest crypto confiscation in the BKA’s history.
The authorities also seized eXch’s German server infrastructure with over eight terabytes of data and shut down the platform, the announcement added.
eXch exchanged crypto without AML
In the statement, the BKA described eXch as a “swapping” service that allowed users to exchange various crypto assets without implementing Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures.
The platform had operated since 2014 and reportedly facilitated about $1.9 billion in crypto transfers, some of which were believed to be of “criminal origin,” including assets laundered during the Bybit hack.
“Among other things, a portion of the $1.5 billion stolen from the Bybit crypto exchange, which was hacked on Feb. 21, 2025, is said to have been exchanged via eXch,” the authorities wrote.
Multisig, FixedFloat among laundering cases
According to a post by crypto sleuth ZachXBT, eXch was also involved in laundering millions of funds from other crypto thefts and exploits, including Multisig, FixedFloat and the $243 million Genesis creditor theft.
Those were in addition to “countless phishing drainer services over the past few years with refusal to block addresses and freeze orders,” ZachXBT said.
ZachXBT was among the first security analysts to report on eXch’s links to laundering $35 million of crypto assets stolen from Bybit soon after the hack was confirmed.
Related: Hacken CEO sees ‘no shift’ in crypto security as April hacks hit $357M
“Lazarus Group transferred 5K ETH from the Bybit Hack to a new address and began laundering funds via eXch (a centralized mixer) and bridging funds to Bitcoin via Chainflip,” ZachXBT wrote in a Telegram post on Feb. 22.
eXch announced termination of services by May 1
After initially denying involvement in laundering funds from the Bybit hack, eXch eventually announced it would cease operations by May 1 in a Bitcoin Talk post published in mid-April.
“Even though we have been able to operate despite some failed attempts to shut down our infrastructure […], we don’t see any point in operating in a hostile environment where we are the target of SIGINT [Signals Intelligence] simply because some people misinterpret our goals,” it wrote.
Addressing the seizure, senior public prosecutor Benjamin Krause stressed the importance of action against “quick and anonymous opportunities for money laundering for any amount.”
“Crypto swapping is an essential component of the underground economy, used to conceal incriminated funds from illegal activities such as hacking or trading in stolen payment card data, thus making them available to perpetrators,” he said.
Magazine: Finally blast into space with Justin Sun, Vietnam’s new national blockchain: Asia Express
Politics
Red Wall MPs should focus on two-child benefit cap rather than winter fuel, Harriet Harman says
Red Wall MPs should push for the two-child benefit cap to be lifted rather than a reversal of the winter fuel payment policy, Baroness Harriet Harman has said.
Baroness Harman, the former Labour Party chair, told Sky’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast that this would hand the group a “progressive win” rather than simply “protesting and annoying Sir Keir Starmer” over winter fuel.
Earlier this week, a number of MPs in the Red Wall – Labour’s traditional heartlands in the north of England – reposted a statement on social media in which they said the leadership’s response to the local elections had “fallen on deaf ears”.
They singled out the cut to the winter fuel allowance as an issue that was raised on the doorstep and urged the government to rethink the policy, arguing doing so “isn’t weak, it takes us to a position of strength”.
Labour’s decision to means test the policy has snatched the benefit away from millions of pensioners.
But Baroness Harman said a better target for the group could be an overhaul of George Osborne’s two-child benefit cap.
The cap, announced in 2015 as part of Lord David Cameron’s austerity measures, means while parents can claim child tax credit or Universal Credit payments for their first and second child, they can’t make claims for any further children they have.
Labour faced pressure to remove the cap in the early months of government, with ministers suggesting in February that they were considering relaxing the limit.
Baroness Harman told Beth Rigby that this could be a sensible pressure point for Red Wall MPs to target.
She said: “It could be that they have a kind of progressive win, and it might not be a bad thing to do in the context of an overall strategy on child poverty.
“Let’s see whether instead of just protesting and annoying Sir Keir Starmer, they can build a bridge to a new progressive set of policies.”
Jo White, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw and a member of the Red Wall group, suggested that her party’s “connection” to a core group of voters “died” with the decision to means test the winter fuel payment for pensioners.
“We need to reset the government,” she told Electoral Dysfunction. “The biggest way to do that is by tackling issues such as winter fuel payments.
“I think we should raise the thresholds so that people perhaps who are paying a higher level of tax are the only people who are exempt from getting it.”
Pic: AP
A group of MPs in the Red Wall, thought to number about 40, met on Tuesday night following the fallout of local election results in England, which saw Labour lose the Runcorn by-election and control of Doncaster Council to Reform UK.
Following the results, Sir Keir said “we must deliver that change even more quickly – we must go even further”.
Some Labour MPs believe it amounted to ignoring voters’ concerns.
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One of the MPs who was present at the meeting told Sky News there was “lots of anger at the government’s response to the results”.
“People acknowledged the winter fuel allowance was the main issue for us on the doorstep,” they said.
“There is a lack of vision from this government.”
Another added: “Everyone was furious.”
Downing Street has ruled out a U-turn on means testing the winter fuel payment, following newspaper reports earlier this week that one might be on the cards.
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