Sir Paul Stephenson, who resigned in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, has taken his first corporate role since leaving the force
Sir Paul Stephenson, the former Metropolitan police commissioner who resigned in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, has taken his first corporate role since leaving the force, by hooking up with the controversial former deputy chairman of the Conservative party, Lord Ashcroft.
The retired policeman, who knows the businessman through Ashcroft's Crimestoppers charity, has been named as a director of Restore, a £60m storage company, listed on the London stock exchange, which is 51% owned by the peer.
Charles Skinner, the company's chief executive, said: "I've never met Ashcroft myself but he presented to us [the idea of hiring Stephenson] on the back of Crimestoppers. We do quite a lot of public-sector work and he can help us understand how the public sector works."
Skinner added that Stephenson was in line for a salary of about £35,000 for the part-time role at the firm, which keeps documents for lawyers, accountants and drug companies among others. He is likely to work two or three days a month.
Stephenson resigned as the Met's commissioner last July after failing to tell senior figures that Scotland Yard had hired former News of the World executive Neil Wallis as an adviser while refusing to reopen inquiries into phone hacking.
The Met's contract with Wallis emerged after the former newspaper executive was arrested, while Stephenson was also forced to dismiss claims that he had been compromised after accepting a free stay at a luxury health spa where Wallis worked as a PR consultant.
Restore's stock exchange announcement did not mention the detail behind Stephenson's departure, stating only that he had "retired" from the Met.
Ashcroft's stake in Restore has more than doubled in value over the past year and is held through a British Virgin Islands-based company called Geraldton Services. Ashcroft has been criticised in the past for failing to admit that he was not domiciled in the UK for tax purposes, for nearly a decade after he received his peerage. Then, instead of becoming a permanent resident, he became a "long-term resident" – a distinction that allowed him to avoid paying UK income tax on his worldwide earnings.