The Telegraph
Mittal's £2m bails out Labour
Last Updated: 12:37am GMT 15/01/2007
Britain's richest man has pledged £2 million to the Labour Party to save it from financial ruin after the cash-for-honours scandal, it was disclosed today.
Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian-born billionaire, is to help the party pay off controversial loans taken from businessmen before the last general election.
Tony Blair and his chief fund-raiser, Lord Levy, who is on bail after being arrested in the summer, are understood to have negotiated the deal, according to The Sunday Times.
The Prime Minister had hoped to keep it quiet until May, when the Electoral Commission discloses all donations received by political parties in the first part of 2007, the paper claimed.
Mr Mittal's latest donation to the party could be contentious, given that he was embroiled in a political scandal with the Prime Minister back in 2002.
The scandal, dubbed Mittal-gate, came after the industrialist donated £125,000 to the party.
It was later disclosed that Mr Blair had written a letter supporting Mr Mittal in a Romanian business deal but both sides strongly denied that there was any connection between the two events.
Mr Mittal, who has a net worth of £14.8 billion, also donated £2 million to the party in July 2005.
He was listed as the richest Indian and the fifth richest man in the world in last year's Forbes List of Billionaires, and is the richest person in the UK, according to The Sunday Times Rich List 2006.
He is currently chairman and chief executive of Arcelor Mittal, the world's largest producer of low- and mid-grade steels.
The company has assets in Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Africa, Poland, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the United States, Ukraine and Turkey among other countries.
A Labour spokesman said: "Mr Mittal has been a committed supporter of the party for many years, and a financial gift from one of the world's most successful businessman is very welcome."
-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges