A Tory donor who funded Rishi Sunak’s private jet travel is being taken to court over allegations of unauthorised business deals that made his sister millions of pounds, i can reveal.
Entrepreneur Akhil Tripathi, who has made millions by inventing an anti-snoring device, has donated more than £150,000 to the Conservative party since 2021.
The sleep guru paid for Mr Sunak’s private jet travel worth £38,500 to Tory events in April this year.
The Prime Minister and his entourage of eight staff were flown to the Scottish and Welsh Conservative conferences on the Embraer Legacy 500 plane on 28 April.
The Embraer Legacy 500 private jet – call sign G-HARG – used by Rishi Sunak to fly to Tory conference events in Wales and Scotland on 28 April (Photo: Richard Dragon)The Prime Minister did use the donation from Akhil Tripathi to fly on the private jet to the Welsh Conservative Party Spring Conference in Newport on April 28 this year (Photo: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images)
i can now reveal that in a matter completely separate from his donations to the Conservative Party, Mr Tripathi is being taken to court in a civil case. He is facing allegations over business dealings he carried out when he was chief executive of the company he founded to market his snoring device, Signifier Medical Technologies (SMT).
The case will be an unwelcome development for Mr Sunak, who is also facing questions from Labour over a separate £50,000 donation linked to Mr Tripathi.
The entrepreneur, who went to a Downing Street reception attended by the PM in April, is facing allegations over payments of “tens of millions” to his sister, according to court papers.
The investors claim that in June he facilitated the sale of his sister’s stake in the company but did not inform the board of the sale, or that the seller was his sister.
Mr Tripathi denies that he failed to disclose his sister sold her shares, and claims he was not asked about his relationship throughout the sale’s due diligence process.
The allegations also include claims that Mr Tripathi sold SMT shares owned by a close friend, and that he more than doubled the salaries of two senior managers without the approval of the company’s board.
The civil court challenge by SMT investors has been issued in the Business and Property Court of the Chancery Division. It concerns claims relating to an alleged breach of duties as director of a company, removal of directors from the company’s board, and payments for the sale of shares.
Mr Tripathi is also accused of failing to disclose a potential conflict of interest between himself and a “close connection”, according to the documents.
The allegations facing Tory donor
During Prime Minister’s Questions on 19 July, Labour MP Neil Coyle asked Mr Sunak about the donation from Mr Tripathi (Photo: UK Parliament/Maria Unger/PA)
Akhil Tripathi, who is named in the High Court action alongside Signifier’s co-founder Dr Anshul Sama and the company itself, is facing allegations from the investors following an independent barrister’s investigation into his actions.
One allegation centres on his help in selling a significant number of shares for an investor that the litigants claim he insisted he was not close to. It later emerged the investor was his sister.
The court filing states: “While [SMT] has been in dire need of funding for at least the past nine months, in June [Mr Tripathi], while chief executive officer of SMT, facilitated the sale of shares for a shareholder to whom he has a close personal relationship, rather than use the funds from this investor to fund [SMT].”
The litigants argue that by facilitating the sale he raised “tens of millions of US dollars” for his sister “likely exceeding the total primary capital raised for use by SMT in growing its business”.
When Mr Tripathi was questioned about the share sale the allegations claim he failed to disclose that the selling investor was his sister, but that his family relationship was proven after the board obtained a copy of her passport.
The claim adds that Mr Tripathi also “secretly facilitated the sale of SMT shares from a close friend to a new investor in SMT at a value significantly in excess of that being considered by a group of insiders doing due diligence at the exact same time”.
It is alleged that this sale was a “clear violation of SMT’s policy requiring board approval prior to any secondary share sales and of [his] duty to put the company’s interest ahead of his own or those of his close acquaintances”.
The court papers also claim that Mr Tripathi authorised a salary increase of 163 per cent for SMT’s chief financial officer, Mujtaba Chohan, without board authorisation.
It is also alleged that he raised the pay of Yasser Zayni, SMT’s vice president of product management, by 117 per cent.
The investors allege that, at a time when SMT was laying off dozens of employees to cut costs and reduce the spending as a result of a lack of funding, “both of these increases were done without approval of the board and violated the company’s delegation of authority policy”.
Mr Tripathi is also accused of failing to disclose a potential conflict of interest between himself and a “close connection” to a company known throughout the court filing as “Co V”.
The filing goes on to list numerous invoices totalling almost £400,000 in which Co V is alleged to have charged SMT more for services than the cost price agreed.
Co V is not named in any court documents.
The claim is that these invoices, which date from December 2021 to May 2023, were “not properly payable” and that Mr Tripathi had failed in his duty to “keep adequate accounting records” that explained the transactions.
Mr Tripathi denies all the allegations.
The “close connection” is another company, not identified in court documents, that Mr Tripathi is said to have authorised almost £400,000 in payments to from SMT.
In a letter to shareholders on 16 August, Mr Tripathi admitted that he could have “handled things better” and that he is “a better entrepreneur” than he is a chief executive.
The court filing claims this response “ably demonstrates why [he] is unfit to have any further role in the company”.
In their own letter to shareholders, disclosed in court papers, SMT’s then directors alleged: “He sees lying to the board and investors, failing to disclose conflicts of interest and working for the benefit of other companies using the company’s money (your money) as being minor infractions.”
In his defence filing to the court, Mr Tripathi denies all the allegations made against him and claims all his actions were taken to ease SMT’s “critical” cash position.
Mr Tripathi also points to $5m (£4m) in loans he has provided the company since last February.
The defence states: “The Petitioners – essentially the Previous Board and their associates – are complaining about the exercise of shareholder democracy. At its heart, this is a very simple matter – the majority of shareholders took the view that the previous board should be replaced.”
It adds: “The previous board have not accepted the will of the majority of shareholders. Instead, they have wrapped up their purported concerns about the first respondent [Mr Tripathi] into an unfair prejudice petition, where clearly there has been no unfair prejudice, in an apparent attempt to force the first respondent to buy them out.”
How Akhil Tripathi made millions from anti-snoring device
Akhil Tripathi has donated more than £150,000 to the Conservatives since 2021, according to Electoral Commission records
The man who funded some of Rishi Sunak’s private jets keeps his cards close to his chest.
Born Akhilesh Shailendra Tripathi in January 1985, the British-Indian is now at the centre of financial misconduct allegations that could see him lose control of the company he founded almost nine year ago.
Mr Tripathi, who is known as Akhil, co-founded Signifier in February 2015 with his business partner Professor Anshul Sama, who is also named in the High Court action along with the company.
He is married to Poorva Tripathi, who has held a number of medical firm directorships herself over the years.
It is understood that at this time he lived with his wife in a terraced house in Hertfordshire that he bought for £350,000 in 2015. He is now understood to live in a £20m-plus Belgravia home in Chester Square.
The house, just yards away from the former home of Margaret Thatcher, is technically owned by JJE Properties, a firm based in the British Virgin Islands.
However, filings in Companies House name Mr Tripathi as the only beneficial owner of JJE Properties.
His lavish lifestyle is also believed to include a chauffeur-driven Bentley, and membership of the swanky Mayfair club Annabel’s.
He launched Signifier to sell his anti-snoring device, a product that gained approval for sale from the Federal Drugs Administration in the US. The device has attracted tens of millions in investment, including from the highly regarded hedge fund Brevan Howard.
The company’s product, eXciteOSA, claims to be the world’s first daytime treatment for snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea.
As a result of the product, Mr Tripathi was named as one of the UK’s Top 100 Influential People 2024 by a group called Award Intelligence, which also offers to assess anyone’s chances of getting an honour such as an MBE, Knighthood or Peerage according to its website.
Mr Tripathi award citation reads: “Thanks to eXciteOSA, 170,000 patients will be treated for OSA, breathing difficulties and sleep disorders in 2022 and 2023 alone. Akhil has raised £95m in investment, anticipates £85m sales by 2025 and has created 172 jobs in the UK, Switzerland and the US.”
Mr Sunak has previously faced transparency questions over the payments from Mr Tripathi in the register of financial interests.
In May the Prime Minister said the donation was from Mr Tripathi, then changed the source of the donation to a business called Balderton Medical Consultants in June, before changing it back to Mr Tripathi in July.
The PM’s entry citing Balderton as the donor provided a company address in London’s upmarket Belgravia. The property is registered as being owned by a firm based in the British Virgin Islands whose beneficial owner is Mr Tripathi.
Craig Williams, the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, also accepted a £4,277 donation from Mr Tripathi for the same flights. His entry for the donation was also changed from Balderton to reflect its true source.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak used the £38,500 donation from Akhil Tripathi to hire a private jet to speak at Welsh and Scottish Conservative Conference events on 28 April this year (Photo: Neil Hanna/AFP via Getty Images)
The Labour Party is also calling for scrutiny of a separate £50,000 donation from Balderton, which was declared by Conservative Campaign Headquarters to the Electoral Commission in November 2022.
In July, Labour chair Anneliese Dodds wrote to Conservative Party treasurer Graham Edwards raising questions over the donation.
In the letter, seen by i, Ms Dodds wrote: “If it transpires that Balderton was not in fact the true source of the £50,000 donation declared to the Electoral Commission, it is my understanding that you may be personally liable for (a) accepting, and (b) failing to report, an impermissible donation to the Conservative Party, even though you were not in post at the time it was received.”
Under Electoral Commission rules MPs and political parties must not accept donations if the source is not certain.
A spokeswoman for Mr Tripathi told i: “Mr Tripathi has made a number of donations to the Conservative Party in a personal capacity, including for the costs of air travel for the Prime Minister and colleagues on 28 April 2023.”
Mr Edwards, who is understood not to have replied to the letter, was contacted for comment. However, a Conservative Party spokesman said: “We have no record of receiving such a letter. The donation has been properly declared.”
In its latest set of accounts, the company revealed debts and liabilities of more than £56m.
The investors are attempting to have Mr Tripathi removed as a director, again, along with seven other individuals. They are also demanding that three former directors be reinstated or that Mr Tripathi and Dr Anshul Sama – SMT’s co-founder – buy the shares of the investors “at a fair value” and at a premium to “reflect the loss suffered”.
They are also requesting that the court orders that Mr Tripathi and Dr Sama repay convertible notes and are claiming costs of the legal action.
The next phase in the case is set to be heard on 30 January, when it is listed for case management and cost management.
No 10 declined to comment.
Sunak’s penchant for private jets and helicopters
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been criticised for his use of private jets (Photo: Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street)
Private flights to party events in Scotland and Wales on 28 April paid for by Tory donor Akhil Tripathi were not Rishi Sunak’s only use of the luxury form of travel.
Indeed, the Prime Minister made another trip to Scotland in July to announce funding for a carbon capture project.
The irony of promoting an environmental policy after travelling to the event by plane was not lost on many. However, Mr Sunak claims his regular use of private air travel is the “most efficient use of my time” and that the answer to tackling global warming was not “getting people to ban everything they’re doing”.
Earlier this month the Prime Minister defended his decision to use a private jet to fly to the COP28 in Dubai to spend just half a day at the climate change event.
He left the summit for his return flight to the UK on 1 December, having only arrived in the UAE 11 hours earlier.
“It is hugely simplistic to measure the impact of our presence here by the hours we spend,” Mr Sunak told reporters. “I feel very good that this has been a very productive day,” he added. “But it’s not the only day that we focus on tackling climate change.”
Indeed, Mr Sunak has used RAF jets and helicopters for domestic flights more frequently than the UK’s previous three prime ministers.
An investigation by the BBC in August found he took almost one such flight a week during his first seven months in office. In total, Mr Sunak boarded 23 domestic flights in 187 days.
The Prime Minister sometimes has access to an RAF Voyager plane for overseas trips, but the government also charters private flights on aircraft operated by Titan Airways.
Separately, Mr Sunak has accepted more than £70,000 worth of private jet and helicopter travel to Conservative Party events from donors this year.
In August he used a helicopter to travel just over 100 miles to and from an engagement in Norwich.
Trains from London to Norwich take one hour and 45 minutes, but Downing Street insisted he had to use a helicopter in order to make a meeting Kuwait’s Crown Prince in London on the afternoon of the same day.
In May, Mr Sunak also used a helicopter for an even briefer trip when he flew to and from Southampton to visit a pharmacy for an NHS-related announcement, a 160-mile round trip that would have taken one hour and 15 minutes by train.
A month later he used an RAF helicopter to travel from London to Dover for a speech on small boat crossings, a journey that can be done in just over an hour by train.
In February, Mr Sunak attended a press event in Dorset. Despite being booked for a visit to a family hub in Cornwall the next morning, he flew to and from London rather than stay overnight and travel the 140 miles between events.
The Prime Minister has also flown on helicopters for his own personal use to travel from London to his constituency in Richmond, North Yorkshire. Each trip is understood to cost him about £16,000.
In May, Sunak used a personal helicopter to visit the billionaire Arora family, who live two miles from Manchester airport, while on his way Richmond.
