Jacob Rees-Mogg praised the Prime Minister’s plan to impose sanctions on Russia this afternoon, saying “tyrants must be stood up to”, Adding:

“Can I encourage her to impose a freeze on assets so that people don’t have the opportunity to take them out of the country in the short-term.”

Scrapbook wonders if Rees-Mogg would similarly support a retaliatory Kremlin backed freeze on British assets in Russia – which could see his own financial interests jeopardised.

It’s a well known fact that the MP for North East Somerset has earned millions of pounds as a founder partner at Somerset Capital Management (SCM) and owns up to 15 per cent of the shares in the company, according to register of MP’s interests.

But according to investment websites, SCM manages sizeable assets invested in Russian firms (for which it takes a tidy management fee every year).

One of the company’s flagship funds (worth £1.4bn) has over £90m invested in Russian equities, according to investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown.

And most of that (£57m) is invested in Sberbank, a Russian state-owned banking service.

The Somerset Emerging Markets Dividend Growth fund was in fact set up by Mogg with fellow founding partner of SCM Edward Robertson in the early days of the company, according to SCM’s website.

What’s more, the fund’s done awfully well for SCM (and for Mogg as a shareholder and director), seeing as its capital has grown by 45 per cent over the past five years alone.

Rees-Mogg seems a little too happy to toe a strong line on Russia after having profited from the country for so many years.