Powell's Firm Paid £1M After Chagos Handover

0:00On March 29, Jonathan Powell, Kier Starmer's national security adviser, faces accusations that his firm pocketed over 1 million pounds in taxpayer. Cash right after he held hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Critics call it a shady reward for giving a British control of this Indian Ocean spot, home to a key U.K. U.S. military base on Diego Garcia. Payments to Powell's group, Intermediate, kicked off after Labor's 2024 election win when he became the government's Chagos envoy. They got 349,000 pounds early on, then 700,000 more on October 23, 2025. After Parliament approved the deal, Britain now pays Mauritius around 101 million pounds a year to keep leasing the base. Trump slammed the move, saying a boost China's grip in the region since Mauritius is their ally, and he wanted Diego Garcia for strikes on Iran. The Mauritius jumped in, too, rejecting the deal in letters and a call to U.K. deputy PM David Lamy.

1:01MPs and peers worry it muddies national security oversight. Powell, who built Intermediate for back-channel talks with tough players, just met China's foreign minister Wang Yi in Beijing. He quit as the firm's 200,000 pounds a year, CEO last December, but plans to return soon. The group uses Intel Network for conflict resolution, with vague details on these funds. Government insists the monies from prior A projects unrelated to Chagos all vetted properly. Still, calls grow for a deep audit amid fears of conflicts in China links. Could this weaken our defenses just as tensions rise?