Unanswered questions leave Nadhim Zahawis political fate in balance

Nadhim Zahawi, who won plaudits for his work as vaccines minister during the pandemic, now faces questions that threaten his political survival.

The Conservative party chair has been at the heart of a media storm over a disagreement with HMRC after the Guardian revealed on Friday that he had paid a penalty to the tax office as part of an estimated 5m tax settlement last year.

The million-pound penalty was agreed in order to resolve what he later described as a disagreement over the exact allocation of shares between him and his father in YouGov, the polling company he founded.

One of the richest members of the cabinet, Zahawi has amassed a personal fortune of more than 100m, a significant proportion of which is understood to be derived from the polling company YouGov, which floated on the Aim market of the London Stock Exchange in 2005.

In 2015, the MP took a job at an oil company with significant operations in Kurdistan. Zahawi earned about 30,000 a month, as well as bonus payments, while working for Gulf Keystone Petroleum, until he quit in 2018 when he became a minister. It was reported at the time that the Iraqi-born Zahawi won the work in part because of his Kurdish connections. He did not offer a comment to the Guardian at that time.