Britain is one of the country’s harshest critics of Putin. Its politicians still receive millions of dollars in Russian-related cash.

LONDON – That’s a strong warning from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to the Russian President Vladimir Putin: Invasion of Ukraine and there will be “significant consequences.”

Three days after that phone call on December 13 last year, Johnson’s Conservative Party received a grant of £66,500 (nearly $88,000) from Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of one of Putin’s former deputy ministers.

In total, Chernukhin has donated more than £2 million to Conservatives since 2012, making her one of the largest female donors in British political history, public records from the UK Electoral Commission show.

Chernukhin says she is a fierce critic of Putin and his war, and none of her donations have been funded by corrupt or improper means. Neither she nor her husband were among those who had been sanctioned by the British government or others, and there is no suggestion that they are guilty of any wrongdoing.

Her lawyers said in an email to NBC News that she opposes having a historical connection to the Kremlin because her husband, Vladimir, fled Russia in 2004 after being fired by the government and harassed. tangled. (Vladimir Chernukhin served as president of Russia’s state development bank VEB, where British assets were frozen after Russia invaded Ukraine.)

But she is far from alone. Lubov Chernukhin is just one of a number of millionaires and billionaires linked to Russia to raise large sums of money for the ruling Conservative Party.

To some experts and critics, this type of outflow reveals the central contradiction in Britain’s response to the invasion: How could Johnson’s government claim to be one of Putin’s strongest opponentswhen London – and the ruling party itself – is flooded with Russian cash?

One of the most prominent critics of the state of funding is Dominic Grieve, former UK Attorney General and Conservative lawmakers, who in recent years have rebelled against Johnson’s administration.

“The Conservatives say these are allowed donations – and they probably are – but you have to ask yourself what is the motive behind this and what is the intention behind it,” he said.

According to a report by the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee in 2020, based on an investigation by the commission that Grieve had headed a year earlier.

Grieve said there is no doubt in his mind that this constitutes a risk to national security.

‘Love curry and gain influence’?

This is a story that begins against the backdrop of the Soviet Union’s collapse in the early 1990s, when a handful of ruthless, ruthless Russians became rich from exploiting the often shady, lucrative resources of the state. .

Fearing their fortunes could be lost in a fragile economy and shaky rule of law, many decided their money was safer in the financial heart of London. Britain’s successor governments (not just Conservative ones) did not disappoint.

Over the next 30 years, London became so complicated with the Russian capital that it gained nicknames like “Londongrad,” “Moscow-on-Thames” or simply “laundry shop”.

This Russian “tycoon” pour their money into London’s tree-lined Hampstead mansions and stucco Georgian townhouses in Belgravia; into luxury goods from the Harrods department store; and into expensive educational programs for their children at prestigious schools.

According to Transparency International, a Berlin-based watchdog, people with links to the Kremlin or corrupt activities in Russia have bought at least 1.5 billion pounds (nearly $2 billion in total). ) property in the UK. That number is “certainly just the tip of the iceberg”, the organization said in a report in February.

Tom Keatinge, a financial crime expert at the Royal Institution of British Service, said. That means “donating to galleries or to academic institutions”, but also means “donating to political parties, typically the Conservative Party, where there may or may not be a gain support and attract influence”.

Accepting this influx of wealth into London is not just a financial risk money laundering but also national security, said Grieve, a longtime critic of Johnson.

That’s because many, but not all, Russian oligarchs are “closely tied to what can only be described as a mafia society – headed by the mafiosi boss, Mr. Putin,” he said.

For decades “the UK has been welcome russian dirty money with open arms,” agrees Bill Browder, a London-born American hedge fund manager who is now a leading anti-Putin campaigner on corruption and human rights.

Although the invasion of Ukraine “was a day to be reckoned with when everyone realized” that the receipt of Russian money “facilitating the murder of tens of thousands of people”, Browder remains skeptical that it will be achieved. significant progress has been made in England or elsewhere.

“In my experience, there is always a difference between rhetoric and reality,” he said.

Perhaps the most ostentatious investment is bought by Roman Abramovich of the capital’s biggest football club, Chelsea FC, founded in 1905. While always denying the allegations, he is connected to Putin, Abramovich, whose fortune is estimated at $12.3 billion, according to Reuterswas sanctioned by Britain and the European Union last month.

The UK government sanctioned him last month along with six others they described as “Russia’s wealthiest and most influential oligarchs, whose business empires, wealth and interests are in the world”. close ties with the Kremlin.”

The political field is also a similarly free field for all. Unlike in the US, there is no limit to how much a registered voter in the UK can donate to a political party. And until recently, wealthy Russians were able to fast-track British residence permits if they invested at least £2 million in the country.

Johnson denied there was anything wrong with these donations, telling Congress in February that “we do not raise money from Russian oligarchs. We raise money from people who are registered to vote on the UK hobby registry. ”

The Conservatives did not respond to NBC News’ email request for comment on questions surrounding Russia-linked funding. The opposition Labor Party has also received Russian-linked donations, albeit to a much lesser extent. There is no hint of wrongdoing by any of these donors, many of whom have complicated relationships and histories with their homeland and Putin.

Among the most famous sponsors was Lubov Chernukhin, who paid several six-figure sums in the auction to play tennis with Johnson and then-Prime Minister David Cameronas well as having a private meal with Theresa May when she was prime minister.

In 2018 court documents, her husband said his stint at Russia’s state development bank from 2002 to 2004 “lifted me to the inner heights of the Russian establishment.” He describes Abramovich and Oleg Deripaskaanother billionaire tycoon and alleged Putin ally, were “like friends” in the witness statement, although the court battle was against Deripaska himself.

In an email to NBC News, Lubov Chernukhin’s lawyers said that she “never held any political position in Russia or elsewhere” and that “she has no contact with President Putin or Kremlin.”

On the day Russia invaded Ukraine, she issued a statement condemning “Russian military aggression”, “Putin’s autocracy” and “Severe suppression of the Russian people”. Chernukhin said she supports “the strongest possible sanctions against Putin’s regime and those who promote it.”

Her lawyers say she married her husband in 2007, three years after he was “deported” from Russia after falling out of favor with the Kremlin. She donated millions of pounds of her own money to the Conservative Party because she was “passionate about democracy”, her lawyers said.

The Conservatives are also under scrutiny for Johnson’s decision last year to award his friend Evgeny Lebedev, a media mogul who owns the London Evening Standard and Independent newspapers and whose father was a KGB agent. The prime minister’s estranged former adviser, Dominic Cummings, speak that he was “in the room” when British officials told Johnson that intelligence agencies had “serious reservations” about peeping – reservations that he said the prime minister ignored.

Johnson said the recollection was “simply inaccurate.” And Lebedev said in an emailed response to NBC News that “the Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet have categorically denied this.”

Lebedev, who holds dual Anglo-Russian citizenship, also wrote in his newspaper “I am not an agent of Russia” but “proud to be a British citizen and consider Britain as my homeland”. He has repeatedly called on Putin to end the invasion of Ukraine.

‘There’s nowhere to hide’

The invasion was certainly a wake-up call for the West. For example, Germany is having its own calculations on Russia’s gas dependence.

In Britain, the government points out that it has never shied away from condemning Putin, whom Johnson this week accused of war crimes and “indiscriminate and unforgivable massacre” of civilians. in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.

The NLAW anti-tank missiles that Britain gave Ukraine have achieved near-cult status on the battlefield and helped repel the Russian advance. And the UK has join Washington and Brussels in sanctions hundreds more Russian banks, companies and financiers.

“There will be nowhere to hide,” Foreign Minister Liz Truss said February 28 of the oligarchic purge.

But for some critics, this is too little, too late.

Browder and others ask why the West started acting by the invasion of Ukraine, but not by Putin’s bombing of civilians from Grozny to Aleppo; by Russian spies targeting people with radioactive poison and Nervous agents on British soil; by the Kremlin’s crackdown on political opposition at home; and by its election interference in the United States and elsewhere.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a failure in deterrence by Western democracies,” said Grieve, a former UK attorney general. “The interesting question is: Do we convey the impression that Putin can act impulsively in Ukraine because people in the UK and elsewhere are too interested in Russian money to do something about it? ”

at Blogtuan.info – Source: nbcnews.com – Read the original article here