More law, this time on trusts. Again, Johnson is the subject & I’m speculating using some of the facts that have dribbled out.

A trust is a legal arrangement in which trust property (money, land, anything) is vested in (made the legal property of) trustees to be used ..

.. for the purposes of the trust. E.g. in your will, you leave property to trustees to hold for the benefit of your minor children until they reach adulthood because you can’t just give it to them direct & it must belong to somebody.

Trusts are very common & varied. ..

.. Fun fact - if you & your partner jointly own your home you are trustees. Weird, right? Especially as you are also probably the sole beneficiaries of the trust & thus hold the legal estate on trust for yourselves.

Trusts are generally embodied in a deed or a will ..

.. setting out the terms on which the trustees hold the trust property. Because a charity in English & Welsh law must have EXCLUSIVELY charitable purposes, trusts are convenient legal models since the trustees can be limited by the terms of the trust only to use ..

.. it’s property for the specified charitable purpose.

Say I give £1M to trustees ‘for the relief of the poor’. Now, if they go to the casino & lose it all they are in breach of trust & personally liable to restore the trust property. IOW they CAN’T act outside the ..

.. terms of the trust.

Charities don’t pay tax.

That’s enough law. Now, Johnson wanted to splurge a lot of money on the refurb so long as it was not his own money. How about getting donations from party members or others? Umm, no. This gets snagged on electoral laws ..

.. restricting donations & requiring inconvenient disclosure, registration & so forth. Alrighty, how about a trust? Donations will be made not to Johnson but to trustees on trust to redecorate & furnish Downing St. Problemo solved!

Candidate trustees were approached ..

.. including Alistair Darling, former Labour chancellor, & other luminaries. Meanwhile, without waiting to put everything in place (executed trust deed, trust bank account, trustees) Lord Brownlow paid the conservative party £58,000 & the party either paid Johnson ..

.. or, more likely, the contractor direct.

Meanwhile, a problem arose. 10 Downing St. is a historic building & a trust for its upkeep could be exclusively charitable (no tax!) ONLY if it existed to preserve the public parts. Refurb of a private apartment, benefitting only ..

.. the inhabitants is not charitable, therefore no tax free status is available & the whole thing founders. Darling might have been willing to lend his name & stature to a board of charitable trustees but not to a private trust for the benefit of Johnson & Carrie. ..

.. Oh, bollocks! But the money has been spent & cannot be unspent & now another snag comes along. You’ve just given the holder of high elected office 58 grand & it hasn’t been declared or registered. So what now?

The only way out is to repay it. Even then offences may ..

.. have been committed so, tough, you’re too late. Johnson is likely not a happy camper right now. He’s down 58 dimes, lumbered with a garish interior that makes him look like an exotic brothel keeper AND staring at prosecution for breaches of electoral law. Brilliant!

..

.. He must be incandescent. And, as many have pointed out, where did hard up Boris get the dosh anyway? Furthermore, as I asked yesterday, does ‘covering the cost’ actually mean repaying £58,000?

.. https://twitter.com/CliveWismayer/status/1387511947214704645

For those wondering whether breaches of laws governing political funding result in 20 years’ hard labour, the answer appears to be, sadly, no. This is not the US. As far as I can make out the penalties are limited to fines which, to be fair, can be chunky.

So Johnson ..

.. is going to need more donations to finance his solicitors (man! I wish he were my client - what a money spinner!) to fend off the Electoral Commission.

In summary, to use the colourful phrase, he’s ‘mired in corruption’ & we now get to watch him try to hack his way out ..

.. of the legal & political thicket in which he is snared. And all for some fancy interior that makes him look venal & tasteless.