Jolyon Maugham has quietly shuffled the ownership of his crowd-funded litigation-losing vehicle the Good Law Project into a Jersey purpose trust. Jersey…
Good Law Project insists it will remain UK resident for tax purposes and there will be no change to how its income is taxed. Nothing to see here…
But what is actually going on? The stated reason for the offshore move is to replicate the characteristics of charity status without being bound by the “moving political guardrails policed by the Charity Commission.“ Maugham wants all the credibility of being a charity, with none of the oversight. The Charity Commission getting in the way of your political activism? Pop offshore and set up a purpose trust instead…
And who controls this Jersey vehicle? In the short term, the only trustee will be a company owned by Jolyon himself, and he will remain the “person with significant control.“ So after all the fanfare about handing over ownership, Jolyon is still, in every meaningful sense, in charge…
The next time Maugham appears on the Today programme to demand that some government contractor be hauled over the coals for its corporate structure, perhaps the interviewer could ask him a simple question. Why Jersey, Jolyon?
Paula Barker, Liverpool Wavertree MP backing Andy Burnham, told Times Radio there wouldn’t be trouble from the markets under Burnham:
“The markets will have to fall in line.”