Tag Archives: Lubov

Why are the Tories still taking money from donors linked to Russia?

Bosom buddies: Boris Johnson with Russian industrialist Alexander Temerko. Johnson didn’t think there was any reason to investigate Russian influence in UK politics.

And what does it mean for Conservative government policies?

Here’s the Good Law Project with some details:

A year on since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, we can reveal that the Conservative Party is still receiving large donations from individuals and companies with links to Russia.

Since the start of the war in 2022, the Conservatives have accepted at least £243,000 from Russia-associated donors – including at least £61,000 flowing into Tory coffers in 2023 alone.

Lubov Chernukhin, who has given £175,000 to the Tories since the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war, is a British and Russian citizen married to Vladimir Chernukhin, a former deputy finance minister under Vladimir Putin.

She has given more than £2 million to the Conservative Party in total.

Aquind, a British cabling company controlled by Russian born oil tycoon Viktor Fedotov, has donated £42,000 to the Conservative Party in the past 14 months, including a £10,000 cash donation to Liam Fox.

And Boris Johnson’s old friend Alexander Temerko – an Aquind director – has donated a further £10,000 to the Tories during the same period. He has donated more than 700,000 in total – and, being Ukrainian-British, is said to be a fierce critic of Putin and his regime.

But he’s a director of a company controlled by a Russian. Hmm….

Some of us remember the Tory government’s reluctance (it was headed by Boris Johnson at the time) to impose sanctions on Russian companies when the war with Ukraine broke out.

There was much public concern over whether the Tories have been slow to act because they had taken a fortune in donations from Russians – and people wanted to know what these UK politicians were asked to do in return for that – as they understood it – dirty money.

The government left the question hanging in the air.

And now it seems that, instead of cutting ties with these people from an aggressor nation, the Conservatives have continued to take money from them. And how has that influenced UK government policy?

Source: Revealed: The Tories are still receiving funds from Russia-linked donors – Good Law Project


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Tories took donations from oligarch linked to Putin. Is this why they never investigated Russian interference in UK politics?

Vladimir Putin: has Boris Johnson been his puppet since before he became the UK’s prime minister?

Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has definitely taken donations from people linked to Russia’s President Putin – and provided private meetings with the last three UK prime ministers in return.

The money totalling £1.7 million came from Vladimir Chernukhin via his wife Lubov, according to the so-called FinCEN files – leaked “suspicious activity reports” by banks.

According to BBC News,

Leaked files show her husband received $8m (£6.1m). The money initially came from a politician facing US sanctions due to his closeness to the Kremlin.

A leak of banks’ “suspicious activity reports” … shows Vladimir Chernukhin was sent the money in 2016 from a British Virgin Islands company linked to Suleyman Kerimov.

Billionaire Mr Kerimov is the owner of Russia’s biggest gold mine and member of the upper chamber of the Russian parliament.

In 2018 he was sanctioned by the US authorities, who were targeting those they said “play a key role in advancing Russia’s malign activities”.

Mr Chernukhin, 52, is a former deputy minister of finance under Vladimir Putin, who left Russia for London in 2004 after being sacked by the president.

The Chernukhins – one of the UK’s most prominent Russian-born couples – are now both British citizens and live in London.

Mrs Chernukhin’s donations to the Conservative Party began in 2012.

The majority – more than £1.5m – came after the $8m payment linked to Mr Kerimov was made to her husband on 29 April 2016, although it is not clear if any of that cash went to the Tories.

Mrs Chernukhin’s lawyers say the Kremlin had no influence because of the donations – but they would, wouldn’t they?

UK prime minister Boris Johnson has suffered a huge amount of bad publicity over his reluctance to do anything about suspicious donations from Russians linked to Putin’s government.

A report on Russian interference in UK politics – including the use of donations to influence policy – was due to be published before last year’s general election but Boris Johnson shelved it for no good reason.

It remained unpublished until pressure finally forced Johnson to re-convene the UK’s security committee, responsible for it, in July this year – nine months after the public should have seen it.

And it showed that successive Conservative governments have welcomed Russian oligarchs “with open arms”, giving them access to political figures “at the highest levels” – and made absolutely no attempt to investigate Russian interference in referendums and elections; in fact, the Tories “actively avoided” doing so.

The Tories had been delighted to welcome Russian money and the oligarchs who owned it, “providing them with a means of recycling illicit finance through the London ‘laundromat’.”

In response to the report, the government said it saw no evidence of interference – but it seems clear that there is a good reason for that: nobody was looking. The report made it clear that the defence of UK democratic processes was a “hot potato” over which no government organisation wanted to take the lead in conducting an assessment of Russian interference.

So we already had evidence that Conservative government had given Russian oligarchs who donated money to the party unprecedented access to – and, we may conclude, influence over – top-ranked political figures including the last three prime ministers.

Now we have evidence that this money is likely to have come from the Kremlin, attached to demands from the Putin government.

If Boris Johnson and his government continue to deny any wrongdoing – while refusing to allow an independent investigation – the public will have no choice but to brand them as corrupt lackeys of the Russians.

I mean…

How does it look to you?

Source: FinCEN Files: Tory donor Lubov Chernukhin linked to $8m Putin ally funding – BBC News

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MPs from all parties say failure to release Russia report is ‘affront to democracy’

Bosom buddies: Boris Johnson with Russian industrialist Alexander Temerko.

If a week in politics is a long time, how would you describe eight months? An eternity?

That’s the length of time Boris Johnson has been sitting on the report into Russian interference in UK democracy.

He says it cannot be released because the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee has not been reconvened since it was dissolved for the December 2019 general election and has no members.

But this is a feeble excuse when one realises that the only reason for this is, Boris Johnson nominates everybody on this committee – and he hasn’t bothered to do so.

It is the only committee that Parliament has yet to appoint, and it is extremely unusual for a Parliament to fail to appoint it for six months – one-tenth of its term.

If Johnson wanted, this committee could meet on Monday and the report could be out on Tuesday (June 23).

He simply doesn’t want to – and now a cross-party group of MPs have slammed his inaction as an affront to democracy. They’re absolutely right:

MPs on Tuesday wrote to the UK prime minister to tell him it “is untenable for you to continue to block the publication of the Russia report,” adding that “the situation is an affront to democracy.”

The letter… tells Johnson “your refusal to allow publication of this crucial document raises serious concerns and questions about the transparency and integrity of our democratic process.”

Johnson faces fresh pressure to publish the report after the Electoral Commission last week published new data showing continued financial support for the Conservative party from the wife of a former minister in Vladimir Putin’s Russian government.

The letter to Johnson says this new information highlighted “the party’s deep connections to Russian oligarchs,” and “further questions as to why you are so reluctant to reconstitute the Intelligence and Security Committee.”

Source: Boris Johnson failure to release Russia report an affront to democracy – Business Insider

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As Russia donates hugely to Tories, there’s still no sign of report on that country’s political interference in UK

Boris Johnson: he says he can’t publish the so-called ‘Russia report’ until a committee on intelligence and security reconvenes to approve it – but he’s responsible for nominating all its members and hasn’t done so. Why not?

Wow. These Tories are coining it very nicely, courtesy of these Russian donors, aren’t they?

Is it because Boris Johnson vetoed a report on Russian interference in UK politics so many months ago, and has been stubbornly refusing to allow its release ever since?

It has just been revealed that Lubov Chernukhin, who is married to former Russian finance minister Vladimir Chernukhin, donated £325,000 to the Conservative party in the first quarter of 2020, according to the latest Electoral Commission data.

In total, Chernukhin has donated £1.6 million to the party over the last five years, including £45,000 for a game of tennis with Johnson, according to the Daily Mail.

An Open Democracy investigation last year found that donations to the Conservative party from Russian business figures and their associates between November 2018 and 2019 came to £498,850 – a significant increase on the previous year, when donations amounted to less than £350,000.

Why are they handing over all this cash?

I mean, nobody dishes out huge amounts of money and expects nothing in return, do they?

Does it have anything to do with the fact that a report on Russian interference in UK politics has been due for publication since December 2019, but Boris Johnson has been suppressing it?

The report by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, including information about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 referendum on membership of the European Union, was finalised in November last year – but Johnson refused to allow it to be published before the December general election. That in itself is suspicious, isn’t it?

After the election, the new Conservative government approved the report’s release on December 13, 2019 – but it still hasn’t become available.

Want to know why?

Because the Intelligence and Security Committee was dissolved with the 2017-19 Parliament and is waiting to be re-convened.

It is now more than six months since the new Parliament began – one-tenth of its lifetime – and this important committee remains devoid of members and has not met.

Want to know why?

Because all members are nominated by the prime minister, who happens to be Boris Johnson – and he hasn’t done it.

We keep reminding him about it…

… but – no. Still nothing.

It’s as if he has something to hide…

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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