LONDON—The scandal lasted just over a week. It began with questions about why 33-year-old businessman Adam Werritty had traveled extensively abroad with his longtime friend, British Defense Minister Liam Fox, signaling an unusually close relationship with the Cabinet minister despite the fact that he held no official government position.
And it grew as a torrent of allegations emerged about the array of individuals and companies that contributed to Werritty’s mosaic of security-related businesses and foundations, which may have supported his first-class travel and lavish lifestyle and suggested he was brokering access to a senior minister for wealthy donors.
On Friday, no longer able to ward off the damaging flak, Fox resigned, acknowledging he had allowed his personal and professional lives to overlap.
“I mistakenly allowed the distinction between my personal interest and my government activities to become blurred,” he wrote in Friday’s resignation letter to Prime Minister David Cameron. “The consequences of this have become clearer in recent days. I am very sorry for this.”
Fox had resisted calls to quit over his relationship with Werrity, the best man at his wedding, admitting there was “the impression of wrongdoing” but arguing that any decision on his fate should await the outcome of a government inquiry. He insisted that Werritty had not profited from their friendship, nor sold access to his office. And an internal defense ministry inquiry concluded that Werritty’s relationship with Fox had not resulted in any security breach.
But revelations and questions about the sources of Werritty’s funding continued to emerge. The Times of London has uncovered accounts and documents of Pargav Ltd., a company set up by Werritty to conduct security policy analysis and which received donations from a lobby group for Israel, a company with interests in Sri Lanka and a venture capitalist with interests in Washington.
On Friday several British media outlets reported a statement from Jon Moulton, a City of London venture capitalist, declaring that Fox had personally asked him to make a donation to Pargev. Moulton said he made the donation and received no benefit for it.
Fox’s political collapse deprives the Conservative party’s right wing of its most prominent standard-bearer. An intellectual descendant of Margaret Thatcher, Fox was leery of too close ties to Europe and an advocate for maintaining strong partnerships with the United States and Israel.
He competed—and lost—against Cameron in the party’s 2005 leadership race. But when the Conservatives won power by forming a coalition with the left-leaning Liberal Democrats in 2010, Fox’s presence in Cabinet was seen as an important counterweight for the party’s right wing.
That internal political calculation was seen as one reason the prime minister stood by his old rival this week, despite the scathing headlines. Werritty was revealed to have accompanied the minister on 18 official trips abroad, including a visit to Sri Lanka where Fox has deep political connections dating to the 1990s and where he had admitted to traveling there at its government expense in the past.
The scandal also resurrected the pair’s dubious ethical history: While in opposition, Fox had been caught using taxpayer money to pay the mortgage on an apartment, where he allowed Werritty to live rent-free.
Most observers concurred that Fox had demonstrated, at the least, a staggering lack of judgment, making his resignation inevitable. “Clearly, Fox decided his position was untenable and he did the honorable thing,” said Col. Bob Stewart, a high-profile soldier now-turned Conservative lawmaker.
(MCT-Los Angeles Times)
