Nadhim Zahawi was sacked as Conservative Party chairman.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wrote to Zahawi telling him he had committed a serious breach of the ministerial code and that he was being removed from government.
In his letter sacking Nadhim Zahawi, PM Rishi Sunak said the Tory chair had committed a “serious breach of the Ministerial Code”.
Sunak launched an independent ethics inquiry after it emerged that Zahawi had paid a penalty to HMRC over his taxes when he was chancellor.
That inquiry has concluded and Sunak is sacking Zahawi as a result of its findings.
A report by the PM’s independent ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus found Zahawi had not declared that his tax affairs were being investigated and that he had paid a penalty.
Sir Laurie also found there had been a “delay in correcting an untrue public statement”, after Zahawi had said he was not aware that HMRC was looking into him.
Levelling-up Secretary Michael Gove told Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg that neither Sunak nor his predecessor Liz Truss knew there were issues with Zahawi’s tax affairs.
Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson told the programme Sunak should have sacked Zahawi a long time ago.
Zahawi tweeted a copy of a letter he sent the PM in reply to his sacking. It said he would continue to support Sunak from the back benches.
Here’s a quick look at Zahawi’s life:
- Zahawi was born in Iraq to a Kurdish family. They fled the country for the UK in the early years of Saddam Hussein’s regime
- After studying chemical engineering at University College London, he went into business and in 2000 co-founded polling company YouGov
- He has represented the constituency of Stratford-on-Avon since 2010, and became well-known during the coronavirus pandemic as the minister who oversaw the first vaccine rollout- a project widely judged to have been a success
- In September 2021 he became the education secretary in a cabinet reshuffle
- And he replaced Rishi Sunak as chancellor, in July 2022, after Sunak resigned and called onBoris Johnson to stand down as PM. But – just two days into the job – Zahawi joined those publicly urging Johnson to go
- Zahawi ran for the Tory leadership following Johnson’s downfall, but was eliminated early on
- He remained as chancellor for only nine weeks before Liz Truss’s eventual victory in the contest
- Truss gave him a number of junior ministerial roles. Aftershe was ousted as PM amid economic turmoil, and replaced by Sunak, Zahawi was made party chairman in October 2022