Tory donor behind Sunak jet denies misleading investors

The SMT investors went to court because they claimed that Mr Tripathi deceived them when they bought shares in the company.

Mr Tripathi is the co-founder of SMT and its largest shareholder.

In one of the cases, investors claim Mr Tripathi had been deceitful when persuading them to buy shares in 2020 from another shareholder.

They allege that this shareholder was at the time married to a close business associate of Mr Tripathi.

In court documents the investors claim they were told by Mr Tripathi that the shares would be available at a discount as the shareholder was going through a “messy divorce”.

Soon after the initial share purchase, four payments left her bank account in the space of a week and were paid to a “Mr A.S.” (Mr Tripathi’s first and middle name) and a further payment was referenced as “a gift” to “A Tripathi”.

In 2021, after the second share purchase, three payments left her account – with the reference “A Tripathi – gift”.

They believe they had been misled that she needed money for her divorce as much of this money from the share sale had in fact been “gifted” to Mr Tripathi.

They allege that therefore the beneficial owner of the shares was really Mr Tripathi himself.

This matters because lawyers for the investors have argued they would not have purchased the shares if they had suspected that Mr Tripathi had been “divesting” from the company he founded.