The organisation started life as the Conservative Friends of Russia - which Chairman Nic Cobb claims has been "dissolved" for years. [2] She has also worked as a media special adviser for Conservative Cabinet ministers Sajid Javid (Communities, Local Government and Housing Secretary) and John Whittingdale (Culture, Media and Sport Secretary). She later recalled Worboys offering her champagne and vodka,[2] which she believed was spiked and, after returning home, began "vomiting and laughing hysterically before passing out until 3pm the next day". One Conservative Party guest on the Russia trip told openDemocracy that the forums current setup had no meaningful connection to CFR but despite its rebrand to WFR, the group today still refers to itself as having been founded in 2012. openDemocracy has also obtained emails showing that in 2013, during the Tory coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Russian diplomat Sergey Nalobin attempted to organise a similar trip to Russia for senior Lib Dems. Moscow-on-Thames: Soviet-born billionaires and their ties to UK's A few days later Number 10 had to deal again with the Culture Secretarys exotic home life. For the moment, Firtash continues to insist on his innocence and remains in Austria while he battles the Americans who want to lock him up. Alexander Lebedev bought the loss-making Evening Standard newspaper in 2009, installing his son Evgeny as proprietor. Boris Johnson pictured with Alexander Temerko, who has given more than 1.3m to the Conservative party. As Sue Hawley, the director of Spotlight on Corruption, stated in OpenDemocracy: Friends of groups of political parties are alarmingly unregulated and provide a back door for unofficial lobbying, access and paid influence. Call for inquiry into Carrie Symonds' influence in No 10 Although the WRF calls itself a think tank, there is no record of any research ever published by the group. While the ISC report has been suppressed during Britains General Election campaign, another report was published in February this year by another official UK parliamentary committee the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee, chaired by Conservative politician Damian Collins, into disinformation and fake news. The DCMS is the lead department for policing our digital frontier and Whittingdale is in charge of its international strategy. We also asked whether he accepted that, in the light of the ISCs Russia Report, he was foolish to accept so much money from an entity controlled by a pro-Kremlin oligarch. The forum originally launched as Conservative Friends of Russia in 2012, a political interest group for those with an interest in Russian politics, business, history and culture, with the aim of strengthening relations between the British and Russian communities. Craig Oliver, David Camerons spin doctor, takes up the story in his surprisingly good book, Unleashing Demons: I am almost home that evening when I get a call from John Whittingdales Special Adviser, Carrie Symonds Carrie has already drafted a statement which includes the following: Between August 2013 and February 2014, I had a relationship with someone who I first met through Match.com. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. As speculation continues to abound over just how Boris Johnson funded the revamp at No 11, Tatler revisits our April cover story on Carrie Symonds - in which Anne McElvoy first revealed the details of the circumstances surrounding the makeover. Is it possible that the minister has acted so recklessly that he could be embarrassed by the Russian secret state? [13] Symonds married Johnson in 2021. The committee estimated that the state-controlled channelsRTandSputniks pro-Leave websites garnered 134 million potential impressions nearly five times the reach of the two domestic campaigns combined (Vote Leave had 33 million impressions and Leave.EU had 11 million). His communications firm, New Century Media, founded a Positive Russia foundation to improve Moscows image in the UK. Putin and Schrder: A controversial friendship - DW - 08/08/2022 Given the weight of evidence, these are reasonable inquiries. [6], In 2007, aged 19, Symonds was driven home from a King's Road nightclub by taxi-driver John Worboys, who in 2009 was convicted of multiple sexual assaults on his passengers. Westminster Russia Forum (WRF) was[1] a UK-wide voluntary organisation, which aims to promote improved relations with Russia. Perhaps the most high-profile London-based oligarch, thanks to his 140m purchase of Chelsea Football Club in 2003, is Roman Abramovich. Firtashs silent business partner for some part of his career is alleged to have been Russias Al Capone-at-large, Semion The Brainy Don Mogilevich, himself linked to the Solntsevskaya Organized Crime Group. Lucas, a journalist who was involved in calls to dissolve the Conservative Friends of Russia in 2013, has called its return a mushroom sprouting on top of a compost heap. He would not be drawn on whether the Kremlin had interfered in the EU referendum vote in support of Leave, but said that he opposed Brexit. That deal left BP with a near-20% stake in the Kremlin-backed company, making cordial Russian relations vital for BP. [9], The group's Board lost all of its Conservative MPs amid allegations of being too close to the Russian authorities and it was rebranded as the Westminster Russia Forum, a non-partisan group, which claims to promote an open platform to debate various issues such as international diplomacy, energy security and internal political systems. A new type of newspaper independent, fearless, outside the system. A few miles across north London lies Arsenal Football Club, in which the Uzbek-born Russian metals, mining and publishing billionaire Alisher Usmanov was a long-time shareholder even at one time considering a full takeover. Rival Shell also has interests in Russia via the huge Sakhalin-2 offshore gas project. Despite describing itself as a think tank, no published research exists, and they are likely more akin to a lobbying group. About two-thirds of Democrats (66%) say they prefer close ties with Germany, compared with 57% of Republicans. A brief analysis of the data revealed that these accountstweeted about Brexit 1,525 times. Our mission is to hold the powerful to account. It has been valued at more than 300m after extensive refurbishment. Boris Johnson to marry fiancee Carrie Symonds in July 2022, report says This breach was referred to the National Crime Agency by the Information Commissioner, Elisabeth Denham. The CFR said this was entirely coincidental. In contrast to Temerko, Chernukhin keeps a low public profile. no less than 17 times between 2010 and 2014. invited him to meet the Russian Ambassador too, gold consolidation deal was pursued for several months, reported to be have been the handler of Russian spies in the UK, Bannon, Brexit, Johnson and Cambridge Analytica: the Daughter of Time, Boris Johnson and Donald Trumps Private Talks on Privatising the NHS Reveal Denials were Untrue, Suella Braverman to Address Radical 'National Conservatism' Event With Ties to US Right, Stereotyped and Belittled: Ukrainians Suffer from UK Asylum Policy, Demonising Inflation and the True Cost of Living. How party donations, sports teams and lavish London residences have granted access to highest echelons of public life. As reported on Byline Times last month, a Ukrainian born oligarch, Dmytro Firtash, currently awaiting extradition to the US, has extensive connections to both Putin, the Russian underworld and the British Brexit establishment, including John Whittingdale. Sergey Nalobin once jokingly described himself on Twitter as a brutal agent of the Putin dictatorship. But that pales in comparison to the estimated price tag on Witanhurst, often referred to as Britains most expensive home. [6][7] She began an affair with Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, in 2018 while he was still married to his second wife, Marina Wheeler. A man in John Whittingdales position could be expected to answer them. [9][10][11][12] She was the first unmarried partner of a prime minister to reside at Downing Street. [37] She used to be a practising Catholic and had her son baptised into the Catholic Church. "We are in no way funded by either government," he said, "receive no other support or direction, and are solely interested in promoting stronger trade, cultural and people to people ties. Whittingdale enjoyed 14,435 of free trips to Ukraine and Vienna paid for by the British Ukraine Society (BUS) which shared the same Knightsbridge address as the Firtash Foundation and the main Firtash entity, Group DF. The Whittingdale-Firtash connection made his reappointment last summer to the DCMS (albeit at the lower peg as Minister of State as opposed to Secretary of State) by new Prime Minister Boris Johnson all the more surprising. [35][36], On 29 February 2020, Symonds and Boris Johnson announced that they had become engaged in late 2019 and were expecting their first child together in early summer. Moreover, the report revealed how the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-backed St Petersburg-based troll farmindicted for election interference in the US, was simultaneously intervening in British politics, with a marked emphasis on stirring up Islamophobia and racial hatred. The former banker turns down interview requests and has not publicly explained why she has given the Conservative party more than 1.7m. Has he put himself in a position where he is vulnerable to the public perception that he is the Kremlins man? Could he be their unwitting asset? Sign up to our newsletter (and get a free edition posted to you). Nicholas Cobb, chairman of the (now) Westminster Russia Forum, wrote to. They include Alexander Temerko, a former Russian junior defence minister, and Lubov Chernukhin, a financier whose husband Vladimir served in Putins cabinet as deputy finance minister. Staines and his business partner, Jag Singh, who was active in Moscow during the 2011 election campaign, later worked for the Russian Embassy on political campaigning. The same day Amol Rajan was speaking at a Society of Editors conference. [31], Symonds was one of fourteen women who testified against Worboys at his trial. Its chair Nicholas Cobb subsequently provided openDemocracy with a comment, stressing that the group was member-funded and volunteer-run. In fact, the press had been sniffing around another woman entirely, Natalia Lokhanova, a 30-year-old from Belarus when she had gone out with Whittingdale four years before and the daughter of a Soviet military officer. According to the Observer, he was keen to get involved in fundraising for the Conservative Party and wanted to know of the rivalry between David Cameron and Boris Johnson. She has lots of deeply loyal politico and journo friends. She apologised and paid the penalty. (modern). Westminster Russia Forum (WRF) was a UK-wide voluntary organisation, which aims to promote improved relations with Russia. Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski dubbed a Putin apologist by other MPs addressed the group in 2016, complaining There is very little debate in the House of Commons about Russia.. Conservative Friends of Russia held its 2012 launch party in the Russian ambassador's Kensington garden, with about 250 Russian and British guests present, including Tories who went on to. [2], In 2009, Symonds joined the Conservative Party as a press officer. New to Byline Times? His MEPs have consistently voted down sanctions packages for Russia over its invasion of eastern Ukraine. [14][15][16], Caroline Louise Beavan Symonds was born on 17 March 1988 to Matthew Symonds, co-founder of The Independent, and Josephine McAfee (ne Lawrence), a lawyer working for that newspaper. openDemocracy this week revealed that more than 200 Russian millionaires had been given golden visas, despite an earlier government pledge to clamp down on the practice. We scrambled so hard to get our BBC Newsnight story on that night, running the extraordinary statement drafted by Carrie Symonds, that I mispronounced dominatrix much to the amusement of then-editor Ian Katz. [27][23] It was reported that she was asked to leave her post as director of communications, with Conservative Party sources in the Daily Mail newspaper claiming that the firing was due to poor performance and allegations of significant unjustified expenses claims. [60][61] After senior aide Ben Gascoigne threatened to resign if she was appointed, the proposal was dropped. Lebdevev plus Carrie Johnson a founder member of Conservative Friends of Russia Caroline Louise Beavan Johnson[3][4][5] (ne Symonds; born 17 March 1988) is a British media consultant and the wife of former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson. It was active in the campaign calling on the UK Foreign Office to allow British Arctic Veterans of World War Two to receive the Russian Ushakov Medal. His then teenage son was educated at a leading British private school. [5] On Remembrance Day 2012 it organised a letter signed by thirty two Members of Parliament demanding the veterans be allowed the medal. Carrie Symonds has dismissed reports that she and Boris Johnson are getting rid of their pet dog Dilyn. However, an investment company run by a close colleague did take part in the privatisation of Alrosa diamond mines. Alexander Lebedev (left) and his son Evgeny (right), with the former chancellor George Osborne in September last year, when Osborne was editor of the Evening Standard. Ah, Carrie "Conservative Friends of Russia" Symonds, later Johnson . The DCMS Committee also found evidence that Russia had access to a Cambridge Analytica database which been compiled through the hacking of 50 to 170 million Facebook users and deployed this during both the EU Referendum and the 2016 Presidential Election campaign to target UK and US voters. Permission was sought from the editor to go the club and speak to her. Rajan, who has denied doing so, killed the story before it was put to King. Rebecca Fulton/Getty Images. The 14 Tory ministers who have taken Russian-linked money Whittingdale had been protected from scrutiny for a long time. [33], She began an affair with British politician Boris Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, in 2018 while he was still married to his second wife, Marina Wheeler.
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