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EXCLUSIVE: Zahawi banked £1.3million from an oil company, which included a final £285,000 “settlement payment” after he first became a Government minister in 2018

Tory minister Nadhim Zahawi has been able to keep his total second job earnings hidden

• Tory minister Nadhim Zahawi banked £1.3million from an oil company while working as an MP, but he has been able to keep his total second job earnings hidden due to a Parliamentary loophole.

Mr Zahawi’s total earnings from Gulf Keystone Petroleum included a final £285,000 “settlement payment” after he first became a Government minister in 2018.

Mr Zahawi was co-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Kurdistan in 2015 when he landed the job with Gulf Keystone, which has an oil field in Kurdistan and which paid him more than £1,000 an hour.

His Gulf Keystone income was declared in his register of interests, but his total second job earnings are not known thanks to Parliamentary rules allowing him to advise companies through Zahawi & Zahawi Ltd, a consultancy he set up with his wife.

Mr Zahawi did not respond to a request for comment.

But Sir Alistair Graham, a former Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said: “This could be interpreted as a deliberate attempt to get around the rules so that he doesn’t have to admit the scale of his earnings in a consultant capacity.

Mr Zahawi made a mint from the oil firm ( 

Image: 

PA)

“The important thing to stress is that MPs have their personal responsibility to ensure that they comply not only with the letter but the spirit of the code of conduct.

“Constituents have a right to know how much time and money he is taking separate to his political work.”

Alex Runswick, of Transparency International UK, said: “Any new controls on MPs’ second jobs need to focus on potential conflicts of ­interests, not just the hours worked or additional earnings.

“Any company owned by an MP risks becoming a shell behind which the extent of the work and these conflicts remain hidden.”

Our probe comes after the outcries over Owen Paterson’s lobbying, and Sir Geoffrey Cox’s taxpayer-funded rental home and £1million-a-year legal work.

Masoud Barzani was President of Kurdistan from 2005 to 2017 ( 

Image: 

AFP via Getty Images)

The Mirror’s investigation has revealed how Mr Zahawi made a fortune in the murky world of business and politics in Kurdistan.

Within months of becoming an MP in 2010, Mr Zahawi became the vice-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Kurdistan, taking five free trips to the region from 2011 to 2015. The secretariat to the group was funded by Gulf Keystone, the operator of the Shaikan oil field in the ­Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Mr Zahawi was a guest speaker at a conference sponsored by Gulf Keystone and a second oil firm, Afren, in the Kurdistan capital Erbil in November 2011.

The two firms soon had Zahawi & Zahawi Ltd on the payroll.

Under Boris Johnson, Mr Zahawi served as Business Secretary and then Vaccines Minister, before his appointment as Education Secretary ( 

Image: 

POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Mr Zahawi’s father Hareth Zahawi’s firm Iraqi Project and Building ­Development was already involved in construction projects in Kurdistan. One source told the Mirror IPBD also had a monthly contract with Afren. The Mirror has found an archived page from the IPBD website which stated it had a joint venture with Sirwan Barzani, the nephew of Masoud Barzani, who was President of Kurdistan from 2005 to 2017.

Sirwan Barzani has been accused in US court documents of corruption at his Iraqi telecoms company, but denies the “baseless” claims.

Nadhim Zahawi’s register of interests shows Zahawi & Zahawi Ltd advised IPBD from 2011 to 2019. It is not known how much the role paid and there is no suggestion Mr Zahawi or his father knew of any corruption.

Zahawi & Zahawi Ltd was an adviser to Afren from 2012 to 2015, according to the register of members’ interests, but it is not known how much the role paid. Mr Zahawi quit Afren after the Serious Fraud Office began a bribery investigation, which led to two Afren executives being jailed for fraud and money laundering.

Mr Zahawi went on to receive almost £300,000 in “bonus payments” from Gulf Keystone ( 

There is no suggestion Mr Zahawi was invloved in wrongdoing.

When he stopped advising Afren in 2015 he became Chief Strategy Officer at Gulf Keystone, initially earning £20,126 and later £29,643 for eight to 21 hours a month, which he declared.

Just weeks after taking the appointment, the Kurdish oil ministry agreed to begin huge payments to Gulf Keystone as part of an existing oil deal.

High Court papers reported by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project allege that Gulf Keystone secured the oil field, prior to Mr Zahawi’s involvement, through a corrupt deal with Kurdish politicians. The claims are denied.

Mr Zahawi went on to receive almost £300,000 in “bonus payments” from Gulf Keystone before he left in December 2017. He was then paid an additional £105,000 for “salary in lieu of notice” along with a £285,000 “settlement payment”. This last payment was made in May 2018, four months after he was appointed a junior minister at the Department for Education by then-Prime Minister Theresa May.