Isaac Kaye, the Labour donor at the helm of a drug company raided by police investigating an alleged £400m rip-off of the NHS, converted to Blairism after supporting South Africa's Afrikaner-led National party.

The seventysomething multi-millionaire moved to Britain in 1985, took Irish citizenship and salted away a small fortune in a Channel Islands trust fund from a US business deal.

Kaye is the chairman of IVAX Pharmaceuticals UK, the health service's biggest supplier of generic drugs and one of six firms suspected of being involved in a price fixing cartel to push up prices charged to the NHS. IVAX denies any wrongdoing and the Labour party has declined to comment on its relationship with Kaye.

Now living in Mayfair, he made no secret of his admiration for Tony Blair by spending £5,000 in 1997 and 1998 on tickets for Labour gala dinners and donating £100,000 to the party in 1999. He also gave £10,000 to the London mayoral campaign of Frank Dobson, the former Labour health secretary.

Kaye was was caught up in a "gifts for influence" scandal in South Africa during the early 1980s amid claims that doctors were being rewarded with everything from cars and TVs to swimming pool equipment and chandeliers for prescribing drugs made by his then firm. He denied any impropriety, saying the giving of presents was not an inducement but an appreciation. Six years ago his company in Britain was censured for offering mountain bikes, Marks & Spencer vouchers and other "unacceptable inducements" to doctors and chemists.

Kaye sold his first company in Britain, Harris, to the Florida-based IVAX Corpin 1990 and it was renamed Norton Healthcare before switching to Ivax Pharmaceuticals UK. Kaye, according to Osler, made £23m from the deal and has a £12m stake in the parent company.