He’s an aide directly to Sunak, and placed the bet three days before the election was announced. The implication is that the aide knew the election had been scheduled for July, and thus placed a bet on it knowing 100% that he would win. The nearest equivalent would be if the aide was an assistant to a boxer who told him he was going to throw the fight: he may not be the actual person who threw the fight, but he knew what was going to happen and used that inside information to win a bet.
At minimum, he’s defrauded Ladbrokes, who likely have it in their terms & conditions that you can’t place bets with them based on inside information, which will include not only sportspeople betting on themselves, but on people working for and otherwise connected to the person/team/party/etc they’re betting on. The fact that Ladbrokes referred it to the Gambling Commission for an investigation suggests the matter may be more serious than that, otherwise they’d have simply refused to pay out and left it at that. I’m not 100% sure, but I strongly suspect that what he did may actually have been illegal, and not merely a violation of Ladbrokes’ terms and conditions. Gambling is legalised in the UK, but it’s pretty heavily regulated (though still not as much as it should be), and I would actually be more surprised if insider bets like this weren’t illegal. Bookies don’t like being defrauded by customers using information that isn’t publically available.
The thing that really stands out to me is that the sum of money was so small for someone in the aide’s position. Craig Williams is an aide, but he’s also an MP on a salary of £90k+. This was such a stupid risk to take for £500.
He’s an aide directly to Sunak, and placed the bet three days before the election was announced. The implication is that the aide knew the election had been scheduled for July, and thus placed a bet on it knowing 100% that he would win. The nearest equivalent would be if the aide was an assistant to a boxer who told him he was going to throw the fight: he may not be the actual person who threw the fight, but he knew what was going to happen and used that inside information to win a bet.
At minimum, he’s defrauded Ladbrokes, who likely have it in their terms & conditions that you can’t place bets with them based on inside information, which will include not only sportspeople betting on themselves, but on people working for and otherwise connected to the person/team/party/etc they’re betting on. The fact that Ladbrokes referred it to the Gambling Commission for an investigation suggests the matter may be more serious than that, otherwise they’d have simply refused to pay out and left it at that. I’m not 100% sure, but I strongly suspect that what he did may actually have been illegal, and not merely a violation of Ladbrokes’ terms and conditions. Gambling is legalised in the UK, but it’s pretty heavily regulated (though still not as much as it should be), and I would actually be more surprised if insider bets like this weren’t illegal. Bookies don’t like being defrauded by customers using information that isn’t publically available.
The thing that really stands out to me is that the sum of money was so small for someone in the aide’s position. Craig Williams is an aide, but he’s also an MP on a salary of £90k+. This was such a stupid risk to take for £500.