Labour Defence Secretary Wes Streeting reportedly received £37,000 ($50,000) from a Labour-supporting think tank whose founder was gifted $610,000 by notorious crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
The Telegraph reports that David Lawrence, founder of the Labour for the Long Term (LLT) think tank, was gifted the sum by Bankman-Fried in June 2022.
This gift was made one month before his think tank donated £30,000 ($40,300) to Streeting, who used the funds to pay for policy advisor Dr. Thomas Gardiner. A year later, LLT would donate another £7,000 ($9,400) to Streeting.
Lawrence reportedly created his think tank’s website on June 20 and it was only 10 days later that Bankman-Fried gave the money to Lawrence.
The Telegraph reports that “it is thought” that Lawrence and Bankman-Fried were introduced to each other through William MacAskill, one of the founders of the effective altruism movement.
This movement was a central part of Bankman-Fried’s spree of donations that took place across 2020 and 2022 when he became one of the largest donors to the US democrats.
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Bankman-Fried was charged in December 2022 with a variety of financial crimes. He was sentenced two years later and handed 25 years in prison after he was found guilty of misappropriating billions of dollars worth of customer funds deposited into his exchange.
Unnamed senior Labour officials reportedly claim the shadow ministers were being advised to avoid accepting donations from LLT.
Lawrence, however, denies this. He told the Telegraph that Bankman-Fried’s gift was donated to UK charities, and that LLT’s donation to Streeting was instead funded by a city investor.
However, the Telegraph found that this investor was recorded as starting their donations to Streeting in February 2023, not around the time of the £30,000 donation in 2022.
A Labour spokesperson said the party “carried out due diligence checks ahead of these donations being received, through which no issues were identified.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Streeting said all due diligence processes were followed, and that a list of donors to LLT did not name Bankman-Fried.
The Telegraph’s report comes amid scrutiny of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, and the funding it’s received from those in the crypto industry.
