The UK Parliament has launched an investigation into Prime Minister Rishi Sunak over possible failure to declare an interest.
"We are happy to assist the commissioner to clarify how this has been transparently declared as a ministerial interest," a Downing Street spokesperson said in a statement on Monday.
It is understood that the Commons standards watchdog will be probing the prime minister over his failure to declare his wife Akshata Murty's interest in a childcare business. Sunak was criticized last month for not mentioning his spouse's stake in a childcare company while discussing a £4billion childcare boost in the Budget. No 10, however, strongly denied he had broken any rules at the time.
Murty, who is an Indian heiress, businesswoman, fashion designer, and venture capitalist, is listed as a shareholder in Koru Kids in Companies House documents as of March 6, 2023.
Sunak's failure to notify MPs of his wife's investment when he was grilled about his £4billion boost for the childcare sector at this month's Budget has led to calls for the prime minister's ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, to open an investigation.
"The Ministerial Code sets out a process by which ministers declare their interests. They do that in writing, in this case to the Cabinet secretary. That process was followed to the letter by the prime minister. He declared the interest in the usual way - he followed the process," a No 10 spokeswoman said at the time.
According to the Code of Conduct, "Members must always be open and frank in declaring any relevant interest in any proceeding of the House or its Committees, and in any communications with Ministers, Members, public officials or public office holders."
This isn't the first time that Sunak's multi-millionaire wife's business has landed him into trouble; last year, he came under fire over the fact that Murty avoided up to £20 million in UK tax on dividends collected from her family’s IT business empire worth approximately £690 million due to her non-domicile status.
Murty is the daughter of the billionaire founder of the Indian-headquartered company Infosys, in which she holds a 0.9% stake. Murty had amassed an estimated 5.4bn Indian rupees (£54.5m) in dividends from the tech company over the past seven and a half years, according to public data cited in April 2020. In 2021, her dividends were worth £11.6m. Such dividend payouts would require UK resident taxpayers to fork out a 38.1% tax (rising to 39.35% from April 6).
If not for her non-dom status, first introduced under King George III in 1799, over the entire period in question, she would have had to pay about £20 million in UK taxes. She was accused of benefiting from a scheme that has tended to help the wealthiest in the UK dodge national levies, with a spokesperson for Murty confirming at the time that she paid an annual £30,000 levy to keep the status.
Eventually, Murty released a statement saying she would pay UK tax on her worldwide income because she did not want the issue to become a "distraction" for her husband.