What’s brown and sticky? The mess Tory Minister Andrew Mitchell has found himself in, is what we reckon. In something that we hope will be called ‘Cocoagate’, the international development minister worked to get a ban lifted from one of the richest cocoa dealers in the world, from whom his parliamentary office received £40,000 in donations.
In the story reported in the Times, which we picked up on the Guardian (of course), international development secretary Mitchell was asked for help by Andrew Ward – Ward’s firm ‘Armajaro Holdings had been banned from trading after allegations that a contractor was involved in smuggling cocoa out of Ghana’.
There’s the usual ‘we would have done this for anyone’ quotes from the Foreign Office, which is a relief, you wouldn’t want government intervention to be swayed by the fact that “Armajaro provided donations totalling £40,000 to Mitchell’s parliamentary office between August 2006 and December 2009. The firm donated £50,000 separately to the Conservative party in 2004.”
Even when an official asked: “Is this… something we should lobby on? Or should the UK company realise they have broken the rules and have to pay the price?”
It’s nice to know the Government would give the same “urgent attention” “at a presidential level” to any of our business issues overseas. We are all in it together, after all. And Mitchell’s personal wealth is only estimated at £2 million, after all.
Oh well, yet another excellent reason to eat Fair Trade Chocolate.
• Read the full story in the Guardian
(image: Roasted cocoa beans, lightly crushed 
Some rights reserved by cstrom)
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