‘I was not paid’: MP fights back in spy row

A Labor MP has denied allegations he was paid to ask questions to discredit a city financier.

Liam Byrne, a former chief secretary of the Treasury, said Viceroy Research boss Fraser Perring’s claims that he received money to ask about the businessman’s ties to Russia in parliament were “patently false”.

The comments followed an argument that broke out this week over comments made by the MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill in the House of Commons last month.

At the time, Byrne said Perring was “a not infrequent visitor to Moscow” and accused him of working “hand in glove” with another firm, Boatman Capital, to launch a short-selling attack on British defense group Babcock.

The MP called for a debate on “the activities of short-selling attack group Viceroy Research and its leader Fraser Perring,” adding: “We must ensure that short-selling groups are not another weapon in Putin’s arsenal.”

Byrne’s comments are protected by parliamentary privilege, which means he cannot be charged. But Perring challenged the MP to repeat his statements outside the chamber, and therefore without legal protection. “If Liam Byrne has nothing to hide, he will make the statements publicly,” the short seller wrote on Twitter.

Perring also claimed that Byrne had ‘allegedly received payment for the remarks in Parliament’.

Byrne hit back, describing Perring’s claim as “patently false.”

Perring has denied any Russian connection, saying he has “never been to Moscow” and has “no such ties” to the Kremlin. He has also called on Byrne to officially withdraw his comments on the parliamentary report.

An MP since 2004, Byrne was Chief Secretary of the Treasury under Gordon Brown before Labor was voted out in the 2010 general election.

He got a lot of attention when he left a note saying there was “no more money.”

Despite being a joke, the note was confiscated by the Conservatives and used repeatedly to attack Labour’s economic record. Aside from claims that Perring had been involved in a brief assault on Babcock, Byrne also said Viceroy had targeted homeless landlord Home REIT.

The company was the subject of a report from Viceroy in November and has been in crisis ever since.

Home REIT is under investigation by the National Crime Agency amid allegations of bribery and also faces a potential lawsuit amid allegations that it misled shareholders.

Perring has denied collaborating with Boatman Capital to attack Babcock and that Home REIT was not targeted by Viceroy.

The former social worker shot to fame when he became one of the loudest voices to raise the alarm about German payments group Wirecard, which collapsed in 2020 following an accounting scandal that saw the CEO arrested and the Chief Operating Officer go into hiding.