First class accusations against Werritty

Very watchable Jon Sopel interview just now on BBC News 24 with Harvey Boulter, the private equity man Liam Fox met in the Dubai hotel. Mr Boulter is, how shall we put this, not without his critics. But he didn’t half stir things up.

He talked of Adam Werritty, Dr Fox’s friend as the “route to Liam Fox,” he mocked the idea the meeting was spontaneous and he painted a picture of Mr Werritty as a little less than straightforward by alleging that Mr Werritty “asked me to deny the (Dubai) meeting took place” when The Guardian were on to it and then “asked me to say the 3M conversation didn’t happen.”

Mr Werritty he said was making a “clear effort … to brush it under the carpet.”

None of which adds enormously to the narrative … but it does add some spice. He talked about Mr Werritty liking first class travel and the Evening Standard has done a calculation based on the flights he took to track Liam Fox round the world – the paper estimates the tickets would’ve cost Mr Werritty around £80,000.

Mr Werritty  has been quizzed by senior officials (not sure if that is actually Sir Gus O’Donnell  – suspect not) about whether he profited from getting corporate access to Liam Fox – we wait to hear Mr Werritty’s response.

Friends say this will clear matters up because he is actually paid a handsome amount by wealthy, like-minded, right-wing individual(s) for whom first class air tickets are small change – the sort of people who backed Atlantic Bridge and who still back its US sister organisation.

But it takes only one invoice from a company showing renumeration for access on top of any such payments and it would be difficult for Dr Fox to slip the pack.

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