An SNP MP accepted flights and luxury accommodation from an Indian jewellery firm later accused of a multi-million-pound gold fraud.
Martyn Day took the donation for him and his wife worth £650 from Goodwin Jewellers in Mumbai to attend an event while on holiday.
Months later the firm’s owners were accused of leaving hundreds of investors out of pocket after stores across India closed without warning.
Sunilkumar and Sudheerkumar Akkarakaran – who also opened a UK branch of their firm – were arrested and a bail application was refused in December 2020.
A Labour source said: “This is yet another example of an SNP MP accepting hospitality from questionable sources. It is unclear what Mr Day’s constituents will have gained from his jolly in India.”
Goodwin Jewellers paid for the Linlithgow MP to fly from Mumbai to Trivandrum as well as providing accommodation in Mumbai for Day and his wife from August 18 to 21, 2018. Day’s register of interests states: “This was accepted as part of a detour on a family holiday, the purpose of which was to discuss with the donor, other businesses and volunteers business opportunities in the UK and charitable activities relating to the Kerala flooding.”
In 2019, Goodwin Jewellers shut its network of stores, leaving customers in the lurch. Hundreds of people were reported to have ploughed about £3million into its gold investment scheme.
Companies House records show the Akkarakaran brothers founded a Goodwin Jewellers in the UK in 2018 but the firm was dissolved in January last year. There is no connection between Goodwin Jewellers in Mumbai and Goodwins Jewellery in Edinburgh.
Day, 51, also travelled to Qatar on an £8000 junket in 2021, paid for by the Arab state’s royal family. He said this was to discuss the rights of World Cup workers and Qatar’s political response to the Afghanistan crisis.
In 2016, he accepted a £4600 trip to the Maldives.
A spokesman for Day said: “Martyn has undertaken charitable work to support the victims of the Kerala floods. This visit enabled him to see the flood relief efforts and was covered by the media and register.”
Last week we revealed how SNP MP Angus MacNeil went on two junkets to controversial World Cup host Qatar.
