David Mackintosh MP and the finances of Northampton Town

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Over the summer the finances of Northampton Town have been in the news.

David Conn wrote a good summary of this byzantine affair in the Guardian at the start of the month:

Put bluntly, there is a huge, grim question over where £10.25m has gone, which was lent to the club by Northampton borough council between September 2013 and August 2014, specifically to pay for improvements to its Sixfields stadium, including a new East Stand.

All that exists in return for so much money are minor works on the west stand, floodlights understood to have cost a little over £100,000, and a shell of a new East Stand for which the developer, Buckingham Group, says it was paid only £442,000, before it downed tools.

Since then the club has been sold to the former Oxford United chairman Kelvin Thomas.

Now it appears that David Mackintosh, Conservative MP for Northampton South and a former leader of the borough council, has been drawn into the mess.

BBC News reports:

A Conservative MP's local party was given undeclared payments linked to a businessman involved in a stalled stadium development, it has emerged. 

David Mackintosh's party received a £6,195 payment for tickets from Howard Grossman, the director of a company overseeing work at Northampton Town FC. 

Mr Mackintosh was leader of the borough council when it approved a £10.25m loan for the plans. Millions of pounds of the money is currently unaccounted for. 

He declined to comment on the payments. 

Three individuals with links to Mr Grossman also paid £10,000 into Mr Mackintosh's general election fighting fund, a BBC investigation found. 

The payment to Mr Mackintosh's party from Mr Grossman and one of the donations for £10,000 were not declared to the Electoral Commission.

The BBC goes on to report a Conservative spokesman as saying "we are looking into the matter".

I suspect this is a story to watch. Already there is a petition in circulation calling on Mackintosh to resign as MP for Northampton South.