Robert Jenrick has defended being handed a £75,000 donation from a company which had received money from a firm registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), despite criticising Labour over the freebies row.

Questions have been raised over the ultimate source of the funds from The Spott Fitness, which gave Mr Jenrick three separate £25,000 donations in July.

As first reported by Tortoise Media, the company received a loan from a firm based in the BVI.

The Tory leadership contender told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips that The Spott Fitness “as I understand it… is a fitness company that operates in the UK”, and the donation was “perfectly legal and valid”.

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Pressed for details on who owns the company and who works for it, the former immigration minister said this would be set out “on Companies House in the normal way” and he has “obviously met people who are involved in the company”.

According to Companies House records, The Spott Fitness has no employees and net current liabilities of £330,000. It has two directors - Mark Dembovsky and Benjamin Hodson.

Earlier this year it registered a loan from Centrovalli, a firm based in the British Virgin Islands, though the amount borrowed has not been declared.

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However, Steve Goodrich, head of research and investigations at Transparency International UK, said that when companies fund politicians via offshore loans “it raises serious questions about the money’s provenance”.

He added: “Electoral law was supposed to only allow businesses with a substantive UK presence to make political contributions, yet examples like this show it permits anonymous cash from anywhere in the world into our democracy.”