No 10 chief of staff spoken to by FBI about work for banker accused of bribery
Mark Fullbrook, the new Downing Street chief of staff, has been interviewed by the FBI as a witness about work he did for a banker accused of bribery, it emerged on Sunday.
Fullbrook was working as a political consultant when he provided research in 2020 for Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker accused of bribing the governor of Puerto Rico around the same time.
A senior organiser in Conservative party politics for decades, who was appointed chief of staff at No 10 after running Liz Truss’s campaign for the Tory leadership, Fullbrook has said that he did not break the law and that he was not aware that his then client may have had corrupt motives for hiring him as a consultant.
According to the US indictment, Herrera Velutini offered to contribute to Wanda Vázquez Garced’s campaign for re-election as governor of Puerto Rico in return for Vazquez Garced sacking the island’s financial regulator, who was investigating Herrera Velutini’s bank. It is alleged that Herrera Velutini offered support worth $300,000.
The launch of the proceedings in the US provoked controversy in the UK because Britannia Financial Services, a company set up and largely owned by Herrera Velutini, has given more than £500,000 to the Conservative party since 2019. Labour said that, in the light of the allegtions against the banker,the Tories should give the money back.
Herrera Velutini denies wrongdoing and is contesting the charges against him, which have a total maximum penalty of 20 years in jail.
Fullbrook is involved because at the time he was working for CT, a political consultancy founded by Sir Lynton Crosby, who has run general election campaigns for several Tory leaders. Herrera Velutini was paying CT for consultancy services that
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