Trade secretary Dr Liam Fox has been accused by Labour of creating "potential conflicts of interest" after an investment adviser he once described as his "political soulmate" was appointed to the board of the Department for International Trade.
Dr Pippa Malmgren, a former adviser to George W Bush, was announced as a non-executive director to the department's board, which sat for the first time last Thursday, earlier this month.
Labour deputy leader Tom Watson criticised the appointment of Malmgren, saying her close friendship with Fox and outside business interests raised serious concerns. Fox was previously forced to resign from the cabinet over his friendship with lobbyist Adam Werrity, who accompanied him on official foreign trips.
Malmgren is the founder and co-owner of DRPM Group, an investment advisory company whose clients include "many investment banks, fund managers and hedge funds as well as Sovereign Wealth Funds, pension funds, global corporations and family offices”, according to the company's website.
Another page states that DRPM helps "investors anticipate how risk and prices will move across the economic landscape and, when appropriate, recommend[s] specific investment themes that help our clients profitably capture coming price movements".
Malmgren's appointment to the board of the Department for International Trade was announced alongside three others by Fox earlier in November. The role of Malmgren and the other board members, according to the announcement, is to "work closely with the Secretary of State and ministerial team to assist the new department in delivering an effective long-term strategy for the UK’s trade policy".
Board members are governed by strict civil service rules on impartiality that require them to act "solely in terms of the public interest" and "declare and resolve any interests and relationships".
Malmgren also has a longstanding friendship with Fox, who provided a promotional quote for her book and introduced her at a public event earlier in 2015 as his "political soulmate".
"It’s my great pleasure tonight – and I usually say that but don’t always mean it but tonight I can actually say it and mean it – to have my great friend, collaborator, and political soulmate Dr Pippa Malmgren with us," Fox told attendees at the Henry Jackson society.
"I usually say when I’m speaking that I regard myself as an unreconstructed Thatcherite, free-marketeer, unionist, Eurosceptic Atlanticist. Of course, she’s not British [so] she can’t say unionist, but she’s certainly every one of those others!"
Fox also took the opportunity to praise Malmgren's book Signals.
"I had the pleasure of being able to read this in advance while we were sitting by the swimming pool on holiday last year, and I have to say that I think it is – as I said in one of the reviews – I think this is a groundbreaking book," he said.
Tom Watson, the deputy leader of the Labour party, told BuzzFeed News Malmgren's appointment raised serious concerns, and likened it to Fox's friendship with Werrity, which eventually led to Fox's resignation from the cabinet.
"This isn't the first time Liam Fox has tried to put one of his friends in a senior advisory role," Watson said. "The appointment of Fox’s ‘soulmate’ as a supposedly independent voice at the Department of International Trade raises serious questions about the appointment process used to fill a post that civil service rules state must be impartial.
"It is vital for the economic prospects of our country that the Department of International Trade is focused solely on securing the best trade deals for Britain as we navigate Brexit. Serious concerns about a potential conflict of interest within the department will only detract from that aim. The British people expect and deserve better."
BuzzFeed News asked the department what role Fox had in Malmgren's appointment, what was being done to tackle potential conflicts of interest, and whether officials knew of the friendship between the two during the appointments process.
"The NEBM [non-executive board member] appointments were made following a highly competitive and rigorous application process," a spokeswoman said in a statement.
"DIT, supported by the Cabinet Office and in complete adherence with Civil Service guidelines, undertook an external and internal recruitment campaign, which led to a shortlist of over 180 candidates from a wide range of backgrounds.
"Dr Pippa Malmgren is an internationally recognised expert on trade policy and geopolitics, which will be crucial as the department works to increase UK
exports and ODI [overseas direct investment]."
BuzzFeed News made multiple attempts to ask the same questions of Malmgren, by email and Twitter direct message, but received no response to any of these approaches, though the latter showed Malmgren had received and read the message.
Malmgren, an active user of Twitter, has tweeted links to Sputnik News, a Russian state-owned outlet regarded by many as a propaganda outlet (and where she has also been featured as a guest). She also suggested on Twitter that the Bank of England is engaged in an "effort to weaken" the pound, and appeared to raise questions about the deaths of associates of Julian Assange.
Malmgren has also written positively about the prospects of a Trump presidency: A New Statesman piece she wrote concludes:
The public voted for this President to have fairly unrestrained power, whether wittingly or not. His intention is to use it. Trump intends to downsize the establishment and attack its corruption until capitalism with a small “c” has enough oxygen and sunlight to thrive again. The country demanded a complete change of direction and that’s what they expect to get – a turn to the right and a “C” change the like of which is long overdue.
In several online biographies – though not the one issued by the Department for International Trade – Malmgren is referred to as an adviser to the Ministry of Defence, on global strategic trends.
During a public talk at the 2016 Milken Institute Global Conference, held in May, Malmgren was introduced by a former US deputy assistant secretary of defence who referred to her “career advising some of the senior British generals right now".
The Ministry of Defence declined to comment as to whether or not it regarded Malmgren as an adviser to the department, but her consultancy is listed alongside more than 100 other organisations – including Oxfam, WWF, consultancies, and universities – in the acknowledgements section of a 2014 report.