A FORMER SAS major who supports the Conservative party has been named as the middleman in the ring that sold details of MPs’ expenses to The Daily Telegraph for tens of thousands of pounds.

John Wick, 60, who runs a corporate intelligence company in the City of London, is known to have approached newspapers on behalf of the people who obtained the data.

Until a year ago he was a member of the Carlton club, which allows only supporters of the Conservative party to join. His name has become known to several newspapers since the Telegraph began publishing details from leaked computer disks containing details of all MPs’ expenses receipts.

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal exposed Wick as the man who arranged the deal.

It is now likely that Wick will be interviewed by police who have been asked by the House of Commons authorities to investigate the leak.

Last week a secretary at International Security Solutions, Wick’s company, claimed he was out of contact while travelling abroad.

It understood that the leaked information was offered to two mid-market tabloid newspapers by the people who had acquired the disks. They asked £5,000 for each MP, which amounted to more than £300,000 in all.

The newspapers did not buy the information but snippets appeared in stories about the expenses claims of Labour ministers. One disclosed that Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, had claimed expenses for two pornographic films watched by her husband.

After this setback Wick was brought in to help to find a buyer. It is understood that Wick approached The Times offering to sell the disks for £250,000, plus an extra £50,000 for analysing the data.

During a 30-minute meeting he said he could offer CD-Roms with scans of every MP’s receipts dating back five years. The Times declined to pay for the information. It has always refused to name the source.

The Sunday Times was not offered the disks as the ring wanted the expenses details to be printed over several days in a daily paper. A deal was then struck with the Telegraph.

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Sunday Times, also named Henry Gewanter, an American public relations expert who works in London. Gewanter is a friend of Wick and was brought in because of his experience in dealing with newspapers. He declined to comment yesterday.

The original source of the leak is unclear. Redacted files were due to be published this summer but practices such as MPs “flipping” the address of second homes would never have been discovered if the files had not been leaked early.

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