Welsh First Minister Vaughan Gething says he will not return £30,000 worth of controversial donations from his leadership campaign.
Instead, Gething says the money will be sent to unspecified “progressive causes.” The Conservatives However, have said the £31,600 must be repaid.
The money was supposed to go to the Labor Party, but it rejected it after it emerged that £200,000 of the total £250,000 raised by Gething came from a company whose owner had previously been convicted of environmental crimes.
A Welsh Labor spokesperson said: “As agreed by Welsh Executive Committee officials, Vaughan Gething is donating surplus funds from his campaign to wider progressive causes.”
Welsh Conservatives leader Andrew RT Davies called the decision a “damning indictment of his own party's judgment of Vaughan Gething”.
“Even the Labor Party that elected Jeremy Corbyn doesn't want to touch this money with a pole,” he told De Telegraaf.
Both Conservatives and Plaid Cymru have called on Gething to return the £200,000 donation from David Neal's Dauson Environmental Group.
Neal was given a three-month suspended sentence and £10,000 fine in 2013 after his firms Atlantic Recycling and Neal Soil Suppliers illegally dumped waste in an area of special scientific interest.
Gething has been plagued by controversy since taking over as prime minister in March.
He fired Hannah Blythyn, his Social Partnership minister, last week after claiming she leaked a message suggesting he had misled the government. Covid Enquiry.
Gething reportedly told the inquiry that he had not deliberately deleted pandemic WhatsApp correspondence – only because a leaked iMessage emerged earlier this month suggesting he had done so. Blythyn denied responsibility for the leak.