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Mohamed Mansour, the Egyptian-born tycoon who is a major donor to the Conservative Party, was knighted in a series of honors unveiled by Downing Street on Thursday.
No 10 said Mansour – who last year provided the Conservatives with £5m, which at the time amounted to their biggest donation since 2001 – would become a bachelor knight.
Labor has criticized Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for using the honors system to reward a major Conservative donor, which the Conservatives have done before.
More than half a dozen Conservative donors feature in the latest New Year honors list, including a knighthood for Sir John Griffin, founder of the Addison Lee taxi firm, who gave more than £4m to the party between 2013 and 2019, according to data from the Electoral Commission. . He has denied accusations of cronyism.
The limited set of honors announced Thursday also included recognition for Conservative MPs and senior businesspeople.
Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of Google’s DeepMind, was awarded a knighthood.
Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, has been named honorary commander of the British Empire. Matthew Clifford, government advisor on artificial intelligence, and Ian Hogarth, president of the AI Safety Institute, also received CBEs.
Harriett Baldwin, chair of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, was awarded the title of dame, as was Tracey Crouch, former sports minister.
Sunak appointed Mansour as senior Conservative treasurer in 2022, giving him a major role in party fundraising.
Mansour, a billionaire, is a naturalized British citizen who is chairman of the Mansour Group, a Cairo-based conglomerate.
He served as Egypt’s transport minister between 2005 and 2009 under then-president Hosni Mubarak.
Mansour moved to the UK in 2009 and in 2010 founded Man Capital, one of the country’s largest family offices, with investments around the world.
Last year he faced criticism in the British press when it emerged that his Caterpillar dealership, Unatrac, was supplying machinery to the Russian oil and gas industry despite sanctions imposed after the president’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine Vladimir Putin in 2022.
Mansour said at the time that Unatrac operations in Russia had been suspended several weeks earlier.
According to filings, Unatrac donated more than £600,000 to the Conservatives between 2017 and 2020.
Labor said Mansour’s knighthood shows Sunak lacks political sense.
“This is either the arrogant act of an entitled man who has stopped caring what the public thinks, or the demobilization-happy self-indulgence of someone who doesn’t expect to be prime minister for much longer,” Anneliese Dodds said , president of the Labor Party.
“It demonstrates a blatant lack of respect for the office he should feel privileged to hold.”
The Conservative Party declined to comment.
Labor has been the subject of honors controversies in the past. In 2006, several millionaires nominated for peerages by then Prime Minister Tony Blair were rejected by the House of Lords Appointments Committee.
It later emerged that the millionaires had lent large sums to Labour, prompting a police investigation, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to press charges.