Judge rules Oxford University’s mysterious £10 million donor will remain secret: openDemocracy loses fight for transparency over controversial donation to fund new research centre at the university

The identity of the donor behind a controversial £10 million donation to Oxford University is to remain secret after a judge dismissed openDemocracy’s appeal for transparency.

Oxford University announced it was given £10 million in 2018 as a gift to establish a new research center specializing in Azerbaijan, the Caucasus and Central Asia. The mysterious donation was facilitated by the president of Azerbaijan’s sister-in-law, but its true source was not disclosed.

The university refused openDemocracy’s Freedom of Information (FOI) request asking for the identity of the donor and copies of communications around the handling of the donation –  arguing that its commercial interests could be harmed by the information being disclosed and citing data protection concerns.

openDemocracy contested the case, but the FOI watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), sided with the university.

A subsequent tribunal backed the ICO, supporting Oxford’s secrecy over the case. The judgment said: “We can find no lawful basis under data protection legislation that would allow for their [the donor] personal data to be published.”

It continued: “We are satisfied that there was detailed and careful scrutiny by [Oxford University]. It is not the role of the tribunal to decide whether universities per se should be allowed to accept anonymous donations, nor to consider the merits of any particular donation.

“The [university] has a committee and a process in place for just this purpose and in this case after careful scrutiny it found no issues that would render the donation unwelcome.”

Last year, openDemocracy revealed that Russell Group universities had accepted millions of pounds in anonymous donations, much of it from foreign donors. Oxford University took £106 million in anonymous donations – more than any other Russell Group university.

In April this year, more than 120 academics, politicians and campaigners signed an open letter calling for transparency over university funding in the UK. They urged political parties to make manifesto commitments to ensure universities are open about their finances, and called for legislation to be introduced, requiring universities to publish a register of large donations and research funding.

Similar measures were proposed in 2022, led by Conservative MP Jesse Norman, but the rules were massively watered down by the previous government and Norman described it as a “missed opportunity”.

Emails obtained by openDemocracy exposed how the proposals were subject to a coordinated lobbying campaign by university bosses, in a bid to keep their funding secret.

At the time, the then education secretary Conservative MP Gillian Keegan, responded to the open letter by shrugging off responsibility for the issue, saying universities are independent and should deal with it themselves. Labor’s Bridget Phillipson – who is now the education secretary – did not respond to the letter.

Two senior MPs also wrote to Keegan, warning that universities “cannot become tainted by anonymous money extracted from potentially corrupt sources”.

Labor’s Margaret Hodge and the then Conservative MP Robert Buckland accused universities of “fighting hard to avoid disclosing the source of these donations”.