Werritty’s associate suspended by CQS

I have the feeling something is brewing in the Dr Liam Fox affair. The BBC just reported that Oliver Hylton has been suspended by Hedgefund Management Firm CQS. CQS are the firm that provided Mr Werritty with a free office, as revealed three days ago.

The Financial times reported today:

It emerged on Friday that Mr Werritty’s activities were funded by a not-for-profit company linked to an employee of Michael Hintze, the hedge fund millionaire. Oliver Hylton, who works for Mr Hintze’s CQS hedge fund, is the sole director of Pargav Ltd, although he has insisted he had no role in running the company. Pargav has paid for flights and luxury hotels for Mr Werritty’s extensive international travels.

Mr Hylton commented in today’s Times [paywall]:

Oliver Hylton, a charity adviser to the head of CQS, a multibillion-pound hedge fund, befriended Mr Werritty through mutual Tory contacts. He became a director of Security Futures, the now defunct defence and energy consultancy that was also established by Mr Werritty, and agreed to become the sole director of Pargav in June last year — a move he acknowledged was “naive”.

“He came into my office and said I want to set up a new company. It sounds ridiculously naive in hindsight, but I agreed. I signed the documents and nothing more,” Mr Hylton said. He added that he did not know the sort of work that Mr Werritty was doing with Pargav, but thought it was related to “geopolitics”. “I saw Adam as an adviser (to Dr Fox) of some sort. Anything he did was for the good of Liam Fox and supporting his office. Adam is a good and honest man. He has just been making a living. I have found him to be nothing other than honest and decent and the same with Fox.”

Now Mr Hylton has been allegedly suspended. Hedgefund firms not being famous for their ethical approach, my guess is that this stinks to high heaven.

More details on this can be found, probably, in a park bin near Westminster.