A Conservative Party donor who paid for Rishi Sunak to fly in a private jet to Wales and Scotland has had his assets frozen by the High Court, it has been revealed.
Akhil Tripathi, an Indian-born businessman, shelled out £38,500 for two flights for the prime minister and has been donating to the Tory Party since 2021.
He is now at the heart of a civil fraud case brought by investors in his medical device start-up, who claim to have been misled by the entrepreneur.
Court documents show that a High Court judge issued a worldwide freezing injunction against Tripathi last month that covers £14.3 million of assets including Tripathi’s luxury house in Belgravia and the British Virgin Islands entity through which he owns it.
The order allows Tripathi to spend up to £5,000 a week “towards his ordinary living expenses”.
Tripathi co-founded a company that produces an anti-snoring device and managed to raise tens of millions of pounds from investors including billionaire Tory donor Alan Howard and Waha Capital of Abu Dhabi.
But the company has been losing money hand over fist, with losses of $42 million on revenue of just $3 million for the year to March 31 2022. Its latest accounts are overdue.
Now, the entrepreneur is facing multiple claims, including from Howard and Waha, who both argue that he did not admit that an “early investor” in Signifier — who had sold a $20 million stake in the business — was in fact his sister.
The asset freeze will raise fresh questions about the due diligence that Sunak and the Conservative party carried out on Tripathi before taking his money and giving him access to senior ministers.
Since he started donating to the Tories in 2021 he has attended meetings with various cabinet ministers on multiple occasions.
Related: Tory MP under the cosh over donor funds was once quizzed by police for allegedly getting a dog drunk