In December last year Barclays Bank pledged to give £1 million to London Mayor Boris Johnson’s ‘Fund for London’, staggered over four years.

The Fund aims to “help London’s disadvantaged children towards better jobs”, according to its website.

Now the Mayor is coming under pressure to reveal the source of a seven-figure donation to the Fund.

While Boris is required to declare all donations to his political campaign, the same does not apply to the Mayor’s Fund.

So when the Libdem Assembly Member asked last year whether he would declare all donations to the Mayor’s Fund over £1,000, Boris declined.

He gave the reason as:

Among other things, naming donors might give rise to the suggestion that certain individuals expect something in return for their donations. For this reason, I have agreed that I should not be informed of the names of the individual donors.

Adam Bienkov at Tory Troll, who’s done the research on this, points out that Boris has also previously refused to release more general details about the fund’s supporters or funding partners.

Why? We were under the impression the Boris administration was all for transparency and accountability? Why not publish the details of the donors?

It now turns out that Boris “is aware” of the identity of who donated the seven-figure-sum, even though he said earlier this knowledge might jeopardise his impartiality.

Adam adds:

Boris has repeatedly described the Mayor’s Fund as an “independent non-political” charity.

However, far from being independent, it is actually based on the third floor of City Hall itself and has the Mayor as the sole patron.

And while he argues that “listing out individual donations might adversely impact on the level of donations” this does not alter the fact that the current set up is open to abuse.

What happened to that transparency Boris?

Reader comments

1. Liberal Conspiracy

   Boris refuses to release identity of Fund donors http://bit.ly/aQ4I5g

2. Paul Sandars

   RT @libcon: Boris refuses to release identity of Fund donors http://bit.ly/aQ4I5g

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