A newly elected Conservative MP who claimed he was not involved in the running of a “Sugar Daddy” website in fact co-owned it, BuzzFeed News can reveal.
Last week Jamie Wallis, the new Tory MP for Bridgend, attempted to distance himself from sugar-daddy.net, a now-defunct website which offered students financial relationships with wealthy “sponsors”. Sugar-daddy.net had been promoted on clean-break.co.uk, another of Wallis’ business ventures.
In an on-the-record statement on Thursday, Wallis led BuzzFeed News to believe that he was unaware of the Sugar Daddy site and claimed he had no financial relationship with its owner, a company called SD Billing Services Limited.
“Online queries indicate the sugar-daddy.net website was registered in 2004 and ceased to be operational in 2010,” he told us. “The site appears to have been owned and operated by a company named SD Billing Services Limited. For the avoidance of any doubt, I have never had a financial interest, nor been a director of SD Billing services Limited and cannot comment on its operational activities.”
But Companies House records flatly contradict Wallis’ statement.
An annual return filed by SD Billing Services in 2008 stated that 100% of its shares were owned by a company called Fields Group Limited.
Fields Group Limited’s annual return from the same year listed Wallis as one of its directors and shareholders.
Companies House records therefore state that Wallis was a co-owner of SD Billing Services — the company which owned and operated sugar-daddy.net — contrary to his claim to BuzzFeed News that he never had a financial interest in the company.
Labour leadership contender Jess Phillips has called on the Tories to withdraw the whip from Wallis.
"Let's be clear: sugar daddy is a euphemism for something deeply ugly: exploitation of women by powerful men,” her campaign said. "The Tories should feel ashamed sitting alongside Jamie Wallis. The only way to show they don't condone this kind of behaviour is to remove the whip."
When BuzzFeed News asked Wallis on Monday morning to explain the discrepancies between his on-the-record statement to us last week and the records held by Companies House, he did not respond.
The Conservative Party declined to comment.