Skwawkbox contacted Corbyn opponent for comment – party responds with ‘confidential’ legal threat, despite police involvement, in what appears to be a repeat tactic
The Labour party has tried to use an implied threat to prevent scrutiny of the financial affairs and required declarations of Parful Nargund, the private health mogul it is standing against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North. Nargund declared his intention to stand against Corbyn last year.
Nargund, who made a fortune out of private fertility services and once said that “privatisation of healthcare is very, very important“, has faced questions and complaints from activist ‘Red Collective UK’ (RC) about his ‘declaration of interests’ as an Islington councillor – and the complainant has referred his allegations to the police and fraud office, who have confirmed they are investigating, with the Met allocating a ‘crime reference number’:
Under such circumstances, Labour’s usual procedure would be a precautionary, administrative suspension – which is not supposed to imply guilt – but the Labour-run council has taken no such action against Nargund and, after a cursory investigation that confirmed he had removed his health ‘holding’ company from his register of interests and took no account of the involvement of police, dismissed the complaint, claiming that he had removed it in January because he ‘ceased to hold the interest’:
However, a June 2024 Companies House document published by RC shows that, while the biggest shareholder is IVI RMA Global, the Spanish company to which the Nargund’s sold an interest in their company for a reported sum in excess of £90m, the other major shareholders in Create Health Holding Limited, with almost 1.8 million shares, is New Spring Holdings Limited:
New Spring Holdings, created in 2021, has only two directors: Praful Nargund and his mother Geeta:
The council responded to RC regarding the shareholding – but although it quotes his complaint that New Spring Holdings owns shares in Create Health Holding, in its response it mixes up the direction of ownership and appears to use this to conclude that there is no interest to declare:
The council also told RC that there was no conflict of interests because Nargund’s company is not active in the borough, but this appears to be untrue, according to an NHS page on London fertility services:
Questions about the complaint and its allegations remain to be answered.
Skwawkbox contacted Cllr Nargund for comment about the RC complaint allegations. He did not respond directly. Instead, London Labour’s press office responded with an email, marked ‘confidential – not for publication’, claiming that Islington Council ‘agreed’ there was ‘no evidence of wrongdoing’ and concluding with this ominous-seeming statement:
Any suggestion that Mr Nargund has done anything wrong in relation to his financial disclosures is completely inaccurate. We reserve all our legal rights in the event you publish anything which suggests otherwise.
This language mirrors closely the threat the party used, on the same day and also headed ‘not for publication’, to try to deter Electronic Intifada (EI) from publishing its revelation that Labour still employs Israeli spy Assaf Kaplan and that Kaplan had infiltrated a number of political Facebook groups:
We reserve the Labour Party’s legal rights and those of Mr. Kaplan in full. We also reserve the right to provide a copy of this email to the court on the issue of conduct and/or legal costs.
EI noted in its article that:
The Electronic Intifada made no agreement with the party to keep its communications off the record and is under no obligation whatsoever to do so.
In the face of what appears to be a strategy of attempting to use legal threat to compromise journalism under the radar, and given that the original request for comment was sent to Nargund personally and not the Labour party, Skwawkbox takes the same view in this matter. Emails were sent in response to Labour advising that it is unacceptable to try to kill a story off the record and asking for formal comment:
However, the matter has evidently been put into the hands of the police so the council’s decision is not the end of the matter. Usually, any official would be suspended pending the outcome of the investigation – Liverpool lost its then-mayor under similar circumstances even though no charges were ever brought. Why hasn’t the same been applied to Cllr Nargund?
The emails received no response.
EI’s Asa Winstanley told Skwawkbox that he regarded the legal threats as an attempt to prevent publication until after voting in the general election – and that it was a taste of what to expect from a Labour government:
They’re trying to delay everything till after election. Thugs, this is only a taste of what’s to come.
Islington Council was also contacted for comment and said it had decided no further action was merited. Neither the council nor the Labour party addressed the issue of police involvement and the abandonment of the usual suspension protocols. Praful Nargund has at no point responded personally.
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