How Sanjeev Gupta sold his green revolution to British politicians

On a bright June evening in 2015, Sanjeev Gupta was in front of a crowd gathered at the Celtic Manor Resort hotel near Newport. One of the companies in the industry family was Polo’s new sponsor at Manor as an event highlighting the highlights of the Welsh social season.

Gupta was on a roll. The day before, he and his father, PK Gupta, celebrated the inauguration of the last addition to the family empire, the coal-fired power plant in nearby Uskmouth.

In the group Alun Cairns, along with Conservative MP for Glamorgan Vale, was preparing the stage for a fascinating vision that the Gupta site would become a renewable energy hub. feed the adjacent steel industry he acquired it two years earlier.

Rescue struggling metal operations and XXI. Gupta’s phone card has been promising to become a green business adapted to the century for almost ten years. Politicians on all parties cannot prove it.

Their aids and connections, as well as government guarantees and subsidies, helped the wheels for a chain of purchases, the 49-year-old man a “savior of steel” and eventually spread to four continents and get $ 20 billion in business. income.

“In the early days it was seen as a positive force in nature,” said a person who knows Gupta. “His intentions were very much in line with what the government was trying to do – to help sick industries and try to revolutionize green energy.”

These intentions have been replaced by efforts to rescue his empire after the collapse of its main borrower, Greensill Capital, which was plunged into a crisis last month.

Greensill’s implosion has also led to further scrutiny to examine how Gupta built a vast business collection that includes Liberty Steel, Britain’s third largest producer. It employs 3,000 people and employs another 2,000 in the UK’s Gupta energy and engineering business.

The appearance of suspicious bills and suggestions for circular trade are raising uncomfortable questions for politicians and government officials who were eager to protect him.

While the UK government left open the possibility of providing a plant for its steels, it rejected a £ 170m bailout request, citing the opaque structure of its GFG Alliance.

Invitations to Cardiff

Wales has been a major focus in the early days of the Gupta expansion since it bought the struggling Newport steelworks in 2013. For more than a year, his company kept about 130 middle-paid employees and allowed them to find work elsewhere beforehand. has restarted the unit. His vision of revitalizing the industry, often in communities in severe economic decline, received support.

This support was still proven as Greensill filed for bankruptcy on March 8 and the next day Gupta wrote to Ken Skates, the Welsh economy minister, explaining the GFG’s situation in the face of deeper problems in Greensill.

March 9, Mark Drakeford, The Welsh Prime Minister told the country’s parliament that Gupta had not asked the government for additional funding, but had set out the Liberty Steel Group’s current strong trade stance and “strengthened GFG’s commitment to Wales”.

“What the letter shows is, in my view, the close relationship that has existed between the company and the Welsh government and the confidence that the company wants to continue to build in its future,” Drakeford said.

Along with efforts to reach out to local communities, the GFG fascinated Welsh stakeholders. Invitations to events at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium were frequent, including a Beyoncé concert in June 2018.

Gupta’s offices are adorned with photographs of politicians and monarchs, including former UK Prime Minister Theresa May and Charles Prince, according to people familiar with the matter.

“You can go to any of Sanjeev’s offices and there will be a picture of him with a politician,” one said.

GFG declined to comment on the piece.

Two former Welsh top ministers took on a role associated with the GFG. Carwyn Jones, the former Prime Minister of Wales, who headed the disintegrated administration between 2009 and 2018, joined the GFG’s advisory committee last year.

The move was criticized by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), which advises the business roles of former members of the government. The commission said its GFG adviser’s stance was against previous advice. He had previously told Jones that he could take on the role with Simec, the GFG company, as long as he was limited to giving advice on energy. Jones has it previously discarded complaint.

Former Jones colleague Edwina Hart, who met Gupta as Minister of Economy, Science and Transport for the Welsh Government, took over the Greensteel Council set up by the GFG. Acoba cleared the appointment in October 2016 under certain conditions. Since then the council has been dissolved.

Transparency records show that Gupta’s various businesses in Wales received more than £ 200,000 government support during the pandemic. The group also benefited from a £ 40,000 infrastructure grant for the Newport steel plant, which was initially awarded to owner Mir Steel before it was acquired by GFG.

Another big part of Gupta’s Uskmouth plan was MP Nigel Adams, Selby and Ainsty, who led a parliamentary group from all parties on biomass.

Received by the deputy More than £ 20,000 from Simec Uskmouth among other things, for a £ 16,000 auction prize and around £ 3,000 for a trip to the UAE with energy and biomass, transparency records show. Gupta donated £ 11,350 in September 2016, records show. A spokesman for Adams said “all allegations that can be reported” have been “declared fair and transparent”. It is understood that none of the donations were made to Adams personally.

Adams ’political aide, Malin Bogue, went to the GFG in 2018 to work in public relations, although he has since left.

Among other people from Westminster who worked at GFG, Katie Perrior, a former Downing Street communications consultant in May, gave the group a brief tip in 2017.

Perrior, who now runs iNHouse Communications, said: “I gave the GFG Alliance a brief tip in 2017 and then they became iNHouse customers shortly after … A year later, we left the account thanks to our request that the customer be our because we decided it was bad for business. “

Another recent political recruitment has been Mark Lancaster, Minister of Armed Forces from 2017 to 2019, who took on a role on the GFG’s advisory committee in August 2020. Lancaster had no previous relationship with GFG before joining the committee. depending on the clearance received from Acoba. Couldn’t comment.

A new chapter for Scotland

Gupta’s sales pitch helped expand into Scotland, where the industrialist gained political support, including Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

GFG’s acquisitions saved jobs and rescued important industry assets, but their funding has been controversial, especially from the last aluminum foundry in Britain’s last Lochaber, along with two nearby hydroelectric power plants acquired in Rio Tinton in 2016. The agreement was a guarantee from the government £. 575m.

Of the government record of ministerial commitments shows Fergus Ewing, SNP’s rural economy minister, with Jay Hambro, head of investment at GFG, had dinner four times from September 2017 to May 2018 in six months. Ewing was asked by Scottish Labor politicians at a June dinner whether he had broken the minister’s rules of conduct. 2017 with Gupta, Hambro and Lex Greensill.

Ewing was not available for comment. The SNP said Ewing’s meetings with Greensill and the GFG were “properly recorded” under the minister’s commitment rules.

At the time of Lochaber’s agreement, Sturgeon took it as a new chapter in Scottish manufacture. Whatever happens to the Gupta empire, the crisis may eventually force politicians to pursue a sustainable strategy for the UK steel industry.