CT Group offered cash payments to journalists for covert UK press coverage
A covert investigation into Lynton Crosby’s lobbying firm reveals a system of secret payments to journalists to plant stories, raising fresh questions about corporate transparency in the UK market as regulators demand tighter rules.
Lobbyists at CT Group offered a freelance reporter hundreds of pounds to place favourable articles in British national newspapers without disclosing the firm's involvement to editors. The £40m-a-year company, co-founded by former Conservative strategist Lynton Crosby, proposed paying cash for editorial control over stories targeting UK housing regulations.
During a four-month investigation, CT Group staff outlined a system where private clients effectively buy influence in the press. “You can do it either way. We don’t have to pay you, and you just go off and do how you normally do. Or, we can pay you, but we get more control over it,” one lobbyist said. They offered “£100 for every story that is successfully published (national or trade)”.
The firm explicitly advised the journalist to hide CT Group's role from publications including the Financial Times. When asked if editors needed to know about the firm's involvement, a staffer replied: “No, I don’t think they need to. We can help you flesh out the angle and stuff to take to the editor and make sure you’ve got the case studies and stuff... we kind of sit behind that.”
The recorded conversations indicate this is not an isolated pitch. One manager admitted to a historical practice of paying journalists, stating CT Group had “worked with a journalist ‘where I paid her to do a certain piece, a certain national piece’, but the journalist ‘never discloses to editors where she gets her sources from’”. They described the arrangement as “a retainer”.
The covert press strategy was designed to serve property sector clients, including Live-In Guardians, by attacking the Building Safety Regulator established after the Grenfell Tower fire. For European businesses and investors, the revelations highlight a deepening opacity risk in the UK’s corporate environment. The capacity for well-connected firms to secretly manipulate public discourse around established regulatory bodies threatens the predictability of British legislation and fair market competition.
The exposure comes as the UK political consulting industry faces mounting pressure. Last week, the Ethics and Integrity Commission called for new transparency laws following a review ordered by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. CT Group denied wrongdoing, stating the events had been “deliberately mischaracterised” and insisting: “we never ask journalists to behave otherwise than in accordance with their professional and ethical standards”.
