UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is under fire for his links with a hedge fund, which earned massive returns from investment in US-based vaccine manufacturer Moderna. Sunak was co-founder of London-based investment firm Theleme Partners but he quit to join politics in 2013. The investment firm he co-founded was managed by a blind trust, which had invested in Moderna. The pharma company's stock surged following the successful rollout of the coronavirus vaccine. Now, critics are asking if the UK PM benefited from this investment.
The Conservative Party leader has been asked on several occasions whether he made any money from Moderna during Covid. So far, Sunak, who was the finance minister during the Covid crisis, has maintained he has no idea. He says he does not know how much money the investment firm made as the whole concept of 'blind trust' was just that.
Also Read: 'Will do whatever it takes,’ says Rishi Sunak amid Chinese spy balloon fears
As per the UK government, blind trusts are those where an individual puts funds into a trust on terms that allow the trustees to buy and sell assets as they see fit without informing the person, in this case - Sunak. The purpose of such a trust is to allow a politician not to declare an interest in certain assets because they do not know at any time what assets are owned by the trust.
Earlier this month, UK's noted journalist Piers Morgan again asked Sunak whether he made any financial gain through a blind trust or otherwise from pharma companies and in particular Moderna during the pandemic.
Responding to this, the UK Prime Minister said that all his disclosures were done through the cabinet office and "what you will see if you read the statement that they put out is that my investments are in what is called a blind management arrangement so I don't actually have any knowledge of what is in there and that's how that works".
"The whole point about something that's truly blind is that it's blind from me," Sunak said, asserting that even he wasn't aware of the investment of trust.
When pressed further on whether he thought it was right that a prime minister should have a blind trust, Sunak said: "I think that's better than them having control...clearly that is the long-established process for how these things work. Because the point is if they're blind I'm not able to direct or control what's going on."
Sunak, however, said that he will release the details in tax filings. "You will see them (tax filings) soon. I am committed to doing that. We just finished the tax filing deadline at the end of January so they just need to be then prepared and they will be released," the prime minister, who completed 100 days in 10 Downing Street earlier this month, said.
Also Read: ‘For me it’s dharma’: Rishi Sunak on becoming UK Prime Minister
As of November 7, 2022, Theleme's top holding was 6,004,406 shares of Moderna worth over $710 million and making up 34.6 per cent of the portfolio value.
Earlier on February 1, the investment firm in a statement said Sunak worked at Theleme from 2010 to 2013. "Once he left, he ceased to have any ongoing financial interest in the funds managed by Theleme. Neither Mr Sunak, nor any of his family members, have held a financial interest in any fund managed by Theleme, or in any Theleme management company entity, since 2013."
In November 2020, UK-based Daily Mirror reported that Theleme gained after Moderna's stock soared from £4.7 billion to £32 billion due to its Covid vaccine. It said the UK government bought five million doses of the Moderna vaccine in November of that year only. Sunak's investments are in a 'blind trust', which the report said protects against conflicts of interest as Sunak himself does not know what he is invested in.
The Guardian, another British daily, also reported that Sunak had declared in 2019 that he was the beneficiary of a blind trust. The contents of the trust had not been disclosed to the public but the stock market filings showed that Theleme had a $500 million (£377 million) investment in Moderna, which accounted for around 20 per cent of all the money it managed, according to the report published in November 2020.
Carol Vorderman, a media personality and author, recently shared an old report by Financial Times on the UK's £1 billion deal with Moderna to build the country's first manufacturing center for messenger RNA vaccines. Sharing the story, she said Sunak as Chancellor signed the deal with Moderna. "He still refuses to say if he profited from this deal via holdings in his hedge fund Theleme which owned £1 billion of Moderna shares," she said.