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Leading RBS banker funds Ed Balls

Anon. | 10.02.2011 07:31 | Public sector cuts

Labour were making much of the Tories City backing during their exchanges George Osborne kicked back mentioning Ed Balls receiving financial backing for his leadership campaign from a “Lehmans banker”.

Ed Balls was the City Minister in government. A close look at the donations shows besides Ken Follett the only individual donating to Ball’s campaign was indeed a banker. Michael Sanzone worked at Lehman Brothers before becoming a director at RBS. He gave £2,500 on August 25 last year and then another £2,500 donation 2 days later on August 28. Oddly a Mark Robertson gave exactly the same amounts on the very same days and gives the same address as Michael Sanzone. So Balls received £10,000 from one address over 3 days divided into 4 smaller payments, making this one house in Islington a bigger source of funds for his leadership campaign than any trade union.

The simple fact is that both the Tories and Labour have close links to the City and we can’t trust either of them.

Anon.

Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

oh thanks for that, and I was just about to vote labour........

10.02.2011 10:01

... I think you took a wrong turn on the way to some other site, please move on.....

Aunty Christ


aunty christ not welcome here

10.02.2011 11:38

Actually I'm very happy to read more of this kind of reporting on this site. It's investigative and it goes beyond the limits of corporate media, whose only tactic ever is to switch allegiance between labour and tory. This article makes the valid point that we can't trust a single one of them, which brings to mind "no matter who you vote for the government always wins", a message that I think is more than welcome on Indymedia.

Aunty Christ, no one wants to hear what a committed anarchist you are, well done you weren't tempted to vote labour. Maybe some of us are interested in these kinds of reports. If there's a problem, there's a little button marked "x" in one of the top corners of your screen - it makes all your problems go away.

Thanks for the article [whatever your posting name was, I can't remember].

greg


Interesting start -- now dig deeper?

10.02.2011 16:54

"Ed Balls was the City Minister in government. A close look at the donations shows besides Ken Follett the only individual donating to Ball’s campaign was indeed a banker. Michael Sanzone worked at Lehman Brothers before becoming a director at RBS. He gave £2,500 on August 25 last year and then another £2,500 donation 2 days later on August 28. Oddly a Mark Robertson gave exactly the same amounts on the very same days and gives the same address as Michael Sanzone. So Balls received £10,000 from one address over 3 days divided into 4 smaller payments, making this one house in Islington a bigger source of funds for his leadership campaign than any trade union."

Hmmmm ........ a possibly good start. Balls got a lot of his support from one household with one of the people in that household working for a bank. Those are your facts so far. Now you want to find out things like .........

1) You described Sanzone as a "banker". Is he? Let me explain that using myself as an example. I worked for one of the world's largest "financials" and I had a final rank before retirement equivalent to a departement head but that didn't mean I was a "manager" (of people) let alone a financial person (I did software for them; I managed systems and major builds, etc., projects, not people). In other words, what reasons do you have to think Salzone would be pro Tory rather than pro Labour? What do you know of his background BESIDES that he works for a bank?

2) OK, so it's a well off household. That's where a campaign expcets to collect its larger donations. But why does THIS household donate to Balls? What have you learned about Balls' positions on issues compared to those of his opponents that might make THIS household want to support him. Note you have managed to identify two of the four donors but still have two to go. Are there any PERSONAL connections?

NOTE: This isn't about supporting Balls or Labour (it's about journalism -- which we have to improve if we want indymedia to be taken seriously). You have the START of a story, enough to suspect that there might be a story, now go dig.

MDN


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