In March 2022, The Policy Institute at King’s College London published a report authored by Dame Margaret Hodge titled, “Losing our moral compass – Corrupt money and corrupt politics”. Within it, Hodge made several defamatory comments relating to my involvement in TeliaSonera deals, inferring corruption and criminal wrongdoing.
My lawyers wrote to The Policy Institute setting out the two small inaccurate passages and asking that they be removed, and an apology issued. In response, King’s removed the report in full from their website. I had no notion, or desire, that the whole report should be taken down, this was entirely of King’s own volition, and I was not consulted. All I wanted was to engage with them around inaccuracies within the report and work with them to resolve these.
The report was then republished in full by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Anti-Corruption, with the addition of a new foreword by its chair, Dame Margaret Hodge. By publishing it through the APPG, the report was then protected by parliamentary privilege and gave the opportunity to Hodge to make allegations and accusations without repurcussions. In this foreword, she alleges that I pressured King’s into its previous removal of the Report using heavy-handed “lawfare”. The attached correspondence shows that this is flagrantly false; I simply sought the correction of two minor passages within the Report.
Hodge abused her parliamentary privilege knowingly to repeat false accusations and has refused to engage with me when I seek to set the record straight.
Documents provided