Sir, – I read Joe Willis' interview with Rishi Sunak, the Conservative candidate for Richmond for the forthcoming General Election with interest.

Considering the extent of the financial crisis which still casts a dark shadow over the economy I found it surprising that Mr Willis failed to press Mr Sunak for more details on his career history.

You state without any further detail that: "He went on to co-found a large investment company." What is this investment company? As a journalist Mr Willis seems surprisingly incurious as to who or what this mysterious company is and what exactly it does.

It did not take a great deal of searching to find that after leaving Oxford University in 2001 Mr Sunak worked for Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, which in 2009, according to Matt Tabbi, the editor of Rolling Stone magazine, is "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells of money."

Following Stanford University in 2006, Mr Sunak became a hedge fund manager for TCI, which was founded by Chris Hohn in 2003.

The shadow banking industry and in particular hedge funds are notoriously secretive and according to Wikipedia, TCI, "has a reputation for aggressive shareholder activism. Some critics believe it has taken an active roll in most situations to promote its own agenda under the guise of sound corporate governance."

I understand Mr Sunak then joined a rival hedge fund, Theleme Partners in 2009 which was founded by Patrick Degorce in the same year.

According to an article by Reuters as well as The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, on March 1, 2013, Patrick Degorce, chief investment officer at Theleme Partners, failed in his attempt to shelter £18.8m from HMRC with the aim of avoiding an £8m tax bill.

The shadow banking industry and hedge funds have a lot of questions to answer regarding the after effects of the financial crisis for they have been the main beneficiaries of the austerity policies followed by the present government. All at the expense of the average man and woman in the country.

Perhaps as a journalist Joe Willis should care to delve a little deeper than accept the polished varnish of the Conservative political machine.

(Mrs) SOPHIE McDONALD

Whashton, Richmond.