M A I N   N E W S

UK Govt ‘helped’ Mittal get £ 70 m loan

London, February 17
British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government helped London-based NRI Lakshmi Mittal, a steel magnate at the centre of a “cash-for-favours” row, secure a £ 70 million loan to help buy Romanian company Sidex, according to a report in The Sunday Times.

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister’s Office said it had sent a letter to the Romanian Government to help Mittal’s takeover bid of Sidex on the advice of the UK’s Ambassador to Romania.

The Sunday Times said the UK Government helped clinch a £ 70 million “soft loan”, party funded by taxpayers, to allow Mittal’s company to buy the Romanian plant.

The UK’s Department for International Development told the UK’s representative to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to vote for lending the money for the privatisation, it said.

The Sunday Times said it had also emerged that the British Foreign Office helped Mittal in a second takeover bid. The British Embassy in Slovakia confirmed that it gave assistance to one of his companies though the £ 300 million bid failed.

The Sunday Times also reported that British Foreign Office officials were considering the request from Kazakhstan to make Lakshmi Mittal its honorary consul in the UK.

The request was made by Kazakhstan two months after Mittal gave £ 125,000 to Mr Tony Blair’s Labour Party. PTI