Peter Oborne, the paper’s chief political commentator and an award-winning author, announced his resignation in a blog on the openDemocracy website, in which he accused the Telegraph of committing a “fraud” on readers by burying reports on the HSBC tax scandal.

The journalist quoted a conversation with Murdoch MacLennan, chief executive of Telegraph Media Group, whom he said freely admitted that advertising was allowed to affect editorial at the paper.

Referring to the phone-hacking scandal which hit Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, Oborne argued that democracy was being undermined by “shadowy” media executives “who determine what truths can and what truths can’t be conveyed” by news organisations.

Mr Oborne detailed a series of investigations about HSBC, and other financial scandals, which he said executives at the newspaper had closed down.

He declared that “democracy itself is in peril” if “major newspapers allow corporations to influence their content for fear of losing advertising revenue”.

He referred to the Telegraph’s decision to delete one story – “HSBC faces £70bn capital hole, warn Hong Kong analysts” – from the paper’s website which reported that the banking giant had “overstated the value of the assets on its balance sheet by more than £50bn”.