THERE was another example  of “foreign interference” in the 2019 election.

No, not from the Russians this time. From the Australians.

During  elections political parties have to give weekly notices of their big donors, which are published by the Electoral Commission — it’s a “transparency” measure, so we can see who is trying to pay the parties for all their election advertising, Facebook posts and rallies. Which big money men — it is usually men — are opening their wallets to buy a slice of the election.

In December the commission reported the Tories took a £50,000 donation from Visy Recycling Europe (VRE).

They’ve got “Europe” in their name, so are they a European firm? Well, no.

As the accounts state “the ultimate parent company and controlling party is Pratt Group Holdings Pty Ltd, incorporated in Australia.”

The Pratts — Australia’s richest family — decided to step in and help Boris Johnson win the British election.

Anthony Pratt is, according to Forbes Magazine, the 207th richest man in the world, with a £5.4 billion fortune. Pratt lives in an Italianate mansion in a suburb of Melbourne, so he isn’t on the UK electoral register. Only UK-registered voters can donate big sums to UK political parties.

But there is a massive loophole — companies with a UK base can donate so Pratt can both live in Australia and own a firm that donates to the Tories in the UK.

Balzac once said: ‘Behind every great fortune lies a great crime,’ and when it comes to the Pratt fortune that does feel like the case

The Pratt family make their fortune from paper, packaging and recycling. Visy Recycling Europe’s main business is exporting European waste paper to Asia for recycling — their accounts suggest over 90 per cent of their turnover comes from Asia, presumably in payments for European paper.

Anthony Pratt is an Australian oligarch, so he has plenty of interest in seeing Conservatives gain and the left lose in Britain, as elsewhere.

Last October the Guardian reported that the main “company of Anthony Pratt, Australia’s richest man, pays virtually no tax.” VRE itself paid no tax from its foundation in 2011 to 2016.

However, the firm did not make a profit in its first five years — hence no tax liability — and did start paying tax in 2017 and 2018 as profits grew. So there isn’t an obvious specific tax issue about his UK company, although it seems like he is the kind of super-rich guy who is “tax efficient.”

To get a real feel of why the Pratts might feel sympathetic to Johnson, beyond being just plain rich, it is worth looking at Anthony’s father, Richard Pratt, who built Visy Industries into an industrial behemoth before dying in 2009 and passing the business to his son.

After Richard Pratt’s death, one of Australia’s leading newspapers, the Sunday Age, said their
“investigation has revealed a dark side to Pratt that played out through decades of questionable business deals and borderline criminality — allegations of bribes, thugs, systematic tax evasion, intimidation, the use of prostitutes and the purchase of political influence.”

French novelist Honore de Balzac once said: “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime,” and when it comes to the Pratt fortune that does feel like the case.  

In 2006 Pratt senior and Visy were fined a record 36 million Australian dollars (about £20m) for price-fixing. For years the firm had been fixing the price of packaging with its main competitors.

There was no free market, just a cartel, that cheated the customers and built the Pratt wealth.

Anthony Pratt, the son and heir, has not been fined or accused of any such behaviour. But the Pratt story does show that the kind of oligarch who builds enough of a fortune in one country to spend money on an election in another comes from this kind of world.

A lot of attention is paid — rightly — to the Putin-friendly oligarchs who fund the Tories. But the reason they fund the Tories is more because they are oligarchs with a lot of money and a desire to rest that money in the UK, rather than because of Putin. So they like a lower tax, less-regulated Tory approach. As do the non-Russian oligarchs — who also fund the Tories.