Boris Johnson’s closest adviser was paid by property firms working for China while he brokered its embassy deal for the UK.
Lord Udny-Lister, then just plain Sir Edward Lister, was appointed by Johnson, who was then the foreign secretary, to lead talks with China over its prospective purchase of the Royal Mint Court near the Tower of London in 2017-18.
However, between October 2016 and December 2017, Lister was a paid consultant to CBRE, which was hired by China to identify and buy a site for its new UK embassy. Since September 2016 he has also been a paid adviser to Delancy, the developer that owned Mint Court. Until the Chinese offer, the firm had plans to develop the site into offices and was not publicly listing it for sale. In a meeting six weeks later, the Chinese ambassador, Liu Xiaoming, thanked Lister for his personal “effort” in securing the deal.
Sir Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the committee on standards in public life, said that “he appears to have had conflicts of interest”.
A spokesperson for CBRE confirmed that Sir Edward Lister did not have any involvement with CBRE on the Royal Mint Court transaction. He was employed as consultant with CBRE between October 2016 and December 2017.
