News from Pom

Lynton Crosby’s firm ensnared in US bribery probe
Michael RoddanNational correspondent
Sep 20, 2022 – 6.46pm


Things are beginning to look a little hairy for home-grown political strategist Sir Lynton Crosby, the svengali to John Howard, UK prime ministers David Cameron and Boris Johnson (the latter while London mayor).


Lynton Crosby (left) and Mark Textor, in 2015. Janie Barrett

Locally, things aren’t great with Scott Morrison turfed from the Lodge and the Wizard of Oz’s lobby shop, C|T Group, formerly known as Crosby Textor and relied upon for its connections to right-wing politicians, understandably bleeding lobbying clients in recent months (although in some cases commercial relationships remain).

Some of the corporations that have given C|T Group dropped off the lobbyist register, include BHP, G8 Education, Airbus Australia Pacific, local insurance lobby group Private Healthcare Australia and commercial broadcasting group Free TV Australia.

Among the list of former clients is online rag The Daily Mail, the local arm of the British daily newspaper. And gladly, there seems to be no editorial conflicts there, given the organisation has joined the rest of Fleet Street reporting on a UK scandal involving Crosby’s man in Downing Street, Mark Fullbrook.

Fullbrook, the chief of staff to new UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, over the weekend has been forced to confirm he is co-operating as a “witness” with a US investigation into a Conservative Party donor charged with bribing a former governor of Puerto Rico.

In August, the FBI arrested former Puerto Rico governor Wanda Vázquez on bribery charges, alleging she had accepted payment from investment banker Julio Herrera Velutini (who denies the allegations) in return for nixing a regulatory probe into his firm.

That money ($US300,000) was allegedly used to hire C|T Group, which held a February 2020 meeting with Vázquez detailing its potential offerings. The firm’s work in the country was led by Fullbrook, at the time C|T Group’s chief global projects officer, although he later left and established Fullbrook Strategies, where he acquired Truss as a client.

While the FBI declined to name Lynton’s group, the UK’s Channel 4 last month revealed the details, in a joint venture with the Sarawak Report, a Malaysian-focused blog run by Clare Brown (the sister-in-law of former UK prime minister Gordon Brown) known for breaking news of the looting of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB allegedly involving “Billion Dollar Whale” Jho Low.

The Sarawak Report has had an interest in Lynton’s firm for some time, in July reporting C|T Group documents that suggested outgoing PM Johnson ought to use the knighting of former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre as a media distraction to stack the House of Lords with loyalists.

By, er, pure coincidence, Fullbrook’s wife had been earlier elevated to the House of Lords by Johnson in 2019.

In any case, C|T Group has said its current and former employees are voluntarily engaging with US authorities, and that it was only hired by Hererra (who has donated £650,000 to the UK Tories since 2019) to conduct opinion research, and that it never worked for Vázquez. The C|T Group has also said it had no knowledge of the alleged bribery plot.

Company records in the UK show Fullbrook ceased as a person with significant control of C|T Group in July 2020, although he resigned as a director in March this year when he set up his own shop, whose website described Fullbrook Strategies and C|T Group as “cousin companies, and our guiding principle is to deliver outcomes for clients without fuss or fanfare”.

Fullbrook Strategies also listed Crosby personally as an advisory board member, along with Sir Michael Hintze, the Australian hedge fund billionaire.

With half of Australia’s press pack in the UK for the Queen’s death (along with Anthony Albanese), perhaps they can get to the bottom of it all ...