THE Conservatives face questions over the use of “proxies” to make donations after the teenage daughter of a foreign arms dealer apparently gave £47,000 to the party.

The donations were made in the name of Rasha Said, the daughter of Wafic Said, the multimillionaire businessman who, as a non-UK resident, is barred from making donations to political parties in Britain.

Rasha last week told The Sunday Times she had instructed her parents to make donations on her behalf but that some of the cash could have come from them.

She was a 19-year-old student at Brown University in America when the four donations were made in her name.

The disclosures are likely to raise questions as to whether the Conservatives have broken electoral rules by accepting cash from a “proxy donor”.

Under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act of 2000, a person giving money to a party on behalf of someone else must be declared to the Electoral Commission.

The Labour party is being investigated by police over allegations that David Abrahams, a businessman, hid his identity by donating cash through third parties.

Wafic Said has homes in London and Oxfordshire but resides in Monaco for tax purposes. A friend of Margaret Thatcher, he was a central figure in the 1980s multi-billion-pound Al Yamamah arms deal between Saudi Arabia and Britain. BAE, the defence contractor, was at the centre of the Serious Fraud Office inquiry into the deal at the time when Rasha’s donations were made.

This weekend Said claimed that his daughter had been mistaken in thinking she had given money to the Conservatives as she had no more than £200 to her name. He described her claims to The Sunday Times as a “fantasy”.

Both he and the Conservative party say all four of her donations were misreported to the Electoral Commission and should have been registered in her mother’s name.

The Conservative party said it would contact the Electoral Commission to say it had registered the four donations under the wrong name.

Over the past four years the Said family have made donations of £300,000 to the party. The full extent of the family’s gifts have not previously been reported because Wafic Said’s wife gave £154,000 under the name “Ann R Said” when she is usually called Rosemary.

Angus MacNeil, the SNP MP who has become a crusader on party funding issues, said he would ask the Electoral Commission to investigate the Saids’ donations. “The commission needs to look into the origins of this money,” he said.

Wafic Said, who was born in Syria, gave more than £300,000 to the Conservatives in the 1990s but stopped when foreign donors were banned.

In 2005 the Conservative party reported four gifts from his daughter comprising £35,000 in cash and a winning £12,000 bid at a fundraising auction. About £10,000 went to the Mid Sussex constituency of Nicholas Soames, then the shadow defence secretary.

Said’s daughter was 19 and in the first year of a psychology degree at Brown University in Rhode Island when the donations were reported in her name.

Rasha, now 23, gives her personal motto on MySpace as “work hard, play harder. Right”. The Sunday Times spoke to her at her London flat on Thursday evening. She said she and her family had always supported the Conservatives and she had requested that her parents make donations for her while she was in America. She was not certain whether her parents always used her money to make the donations.

She said: “I say, look, please donate what you can from my account — or if they \ did it from their account, I’m not sure what they did.

“I also put something in my name because I really wanted to be a young supporter for the Conservatives.”

The conversation continued: Rasha: “They would have donated on my behalf.”

Reporter: “But using your money?”

Rasha: “Yes, using my money — and if they had used their money then they would have done it because I had no funds in my account.”

Her comments raised questions about whether the donations should have been registered in her name only.

On Friday The Sunday Times told Said of his daughter’s claim that she had given money to the Conservatives through her parents.

He replied: “I’m sorry, if she said that, it’s a fantasy . . . Sometimes these young people . . . they say things — they want to show they are important. I’m telling you the facts.”

He said Rasha had had no independent money of her own: “My daughter in 2005 was 19 years old. The maximum money she has is £200. She was a student at the time . . . she has no money herself and she never, ever gave to any party.

“Do you think I would use my daughter to pay the Conservative party? No way.”

He said all Rasha’s donations were in fact made by his wife Rosemary. Under the name “Ann R Said”, Rosemary Said has made three donations totalling £154,000 to the party.

She has also given £100,000 using her normal name to the Conservative Middle East Council, a body that attempts to give Tory MPs a better understanding of the region. She is eligible to make donations.

Said said his wife was independently wealthy and used her own money to make the donations. He said the cheque for £10,000 paid to the Mid Sussex Conservatives was made out by his wife.

The donations had been wrongly accredited to Rasha by the Conservative party, he said: “The problem is, both of them have the same initial. ”

Yesterday a statement from the Conservative party said: “In 2005 a number of donations from Rosemary were incorrectly registered with the Electoral Commission as coming from her daughter Rasha. This was an administrative error for which we take full responsibility. It occurred because of a misreading of the electoral roll during compliance checks.

“Now that the mistake has been drawn to our attention, we will take immediate steps to correct it.”

A Labour source claims that in Tony Blair’s second term, Said talked to Labour about giving money through his wife but the party turned this down. But Said insisted that the suggestion had come from Labour and he had rejected it.

Insight: Jonathan Calvert, Claire Newell

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