A secret report blocked by the Tories names nine Russian Tory donors who have been involved in illicit Russian activities in Britain and who present a clear threat to UK democracy, according to The Times.
One of the named donors is Alexander Temerko, a close friend of Boris Johnson’s who has donated £1.2Million to the Tory party. Temerko actually worked for the Kremlin’s defence ministry.
Another is Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB spy in London, who now owns the London Evening Standard newspaper and was given the green light to buy the paper by Blairs govt. Worth reminding folks that the current Editor of the Evening Standard is none other than Ex-Chancellor George Osborne.
It also names the wife of Vladimir Chernukhin, Lubov Chernukhin, a former ally of Vladimir Putin. Apparently, Mrs Chernukhin is by far the largest Russian Tory donor and although it doesn’t say how much she has donated in total it does mention that she paid £160,000 in return for a tennis match with Boris Johnson and that she’s already donated more than £450,000 to the Tories this year alone.
Emily Thornberry recently raised questions over claims by a whistleblower that Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, also has connections with Vladislav Surkov, who is known to have close links to the Kremlin and Russia’s security agencies.
Anya Zenn
