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A senior Labour MP has written to the head of the UK Insolvency Service urging him to consider whether foreign secretary Lord David Cameron was a “shadow director” of the collapsed finance group Greensill Capital.
The intervention comes as Lex Greensill, the company’s founder, faces the possibility of being disqualified from company directorships for up to 15 years as the IS nears the conclusion of its lengthy probe into the company’s failure.
It is not yet clear whether the service will pursue any other individuals involved in the company, which collapsed in March 2021 and was at the heart of one of the biggest lobbying scandals in modern Britain.
If the service believed that Greensill should be disqualified it would make a recommendation to Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, for a final decision.
In a letter to Dean Beale, IS chief executive, shadow deputy leader of the Commons Nick Smith wrote that Cameron was the “public face” of Lex Greensill’s company who attended board meetings and could access confidential company information.
“Cumulatively, these activities at Greensill may point to a pattern of behaviour consistent with shadow directorship,” Smith argued.
“It is not an offence to be a shadow director. However . . . if found to be a shadow director, you can be subject to the same duties and liabilities as a company director,” he wrote.
Cameron, who was a highly paid “boardroom adviser” to the company, lobbied ministers and civil servants 56 times to try to secure Greensill access to state-run Covid-19 debt schemes.
Greensill’s collapse in 2021 led to criminal investigations that are continuing in the UK, Germany and Switzerland. Cameron’s conduct is not thought to be the subject of those investigations.
The IS must conclude its own investigation before the three-year window to bring action expires in March 2024.
One person familiar with the investigation said the IS had been focused on a decision by insurance company Tokio Marine to cancel its insurance contract and efforts by Lex Greensill to get them to extend the policy beyond March 1 2021.
The authority has been examining what was communicated by Greensill to board members regarding this process.
The IS said: “We are not able to comment on our investigatory activity.”
In his letter, Smith claimed that Cameron could be seen as a shadow director given his role as a “driving force of the business”.
To be a shadow director an individual needs to be making decisions or strongly influencing them at a company, despite not formally being a director.
At a hearing of the Treasury select committee in May 2021, Cameron told MPs that he was an adviser rather than a director. “In my case there’s absolutely no question of me controlling this company while not being on the board. I don’t think that applies to me at all,” he said.
However, messages from both Cameron and Lex Greensill appeared to convey a different impression.
At one point Greensill said Cameron was “on our board” in a text message intended for Scott Morrison, the then Australian prime minister. On another occasion Cameron referred to Bill Crothers, a former civil servant working at Greensill Capital, as a “fellow board member”.
Cameron was approached for comment. Greensill did not comment.