Long read from The Sunday Times today on Johnson's special relationship with Lebedev
How Boris Johnson’s friendship with Evgeny Lebedev deepened despite MI6 concerns
On March 17, 2020, Boris Johnson learnt that British intelligence had warned against granting a peerage to his close friend Evgeny Lebedev on national security grounds. He responded with incredulity.
The 41-year-old Russian businessman derives his wealth from his father, Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB spy turned billionaire oligarch with investments in occupied Crimea. Lebedev Jr has previously defended Vladimir Putin and raised questions over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the Kremlin critic poisoned with polonium at a London hotel.
Yet he is also the longstanding proprietor of two British newspapers — The Independent and the Evening Standard — and a mainstay of the British establishment. Sir Elton John, Sir Ian McKellen and Stephen Fry are friends. They, like Johnson, have dined at his London home, holidayed at his 12th-century Italian castle, and partied with him in public.
According to a witness, Johnson’s objections were immediate.
“Hang on a second,” he is said to have protested. “What’s the problem? Why haven’t any of you told me there was a problem before? Because I’ve been talking to him for ages. How come it’s OK for him to own our newspapers and talk to everybody?” Abramovich says hi
But that assertion — that Lebedev was only a problem now that Johnson was in Downing Street, that security services had intervened out of nowhere to block a lifetime seat for him in the House of Lords — was not accurate. Advisers to Johnson have known for years of the security services’ concerns.
Today it can be revealed that, as long as a decade ago, Sir John Sawers, then head of MI6, made it clear that he did not deem Lebedev to be a suitable person to meet.
In 2013 Sawers, 66, known to the security services as “C”, was scheduled to host a lunch at his agency’s Vauxhall Cross headquarters with Chris Blackhurst, then editor of The Independent — the national newspaper purchased for a nominal £1 by Lebedev’s father in March 2010.
Such gatherings are not unusual. Most Fleet Street editors enjoy occasional access to the head of MI6 in the form of off-the-record briefings, in which politics and national security can be discussed candidly. James Harding of The Times and Lionel Barber of the Financial Times also saw Sawers during the relevant period.
This time Lebedev wanted a seat at the table too. MI6’s initial response was categorical, two sources close to the events have confirmed. “That was not going to happen,” said one. A second said: “Lebedev tried to muscle in on the lunch. The answer was ‘No way’.”
Sawers, who, as C, was the only MI6 official at the time whose identity was known to the public, made the decision in co-ordination with members of his team.
They believed that Lebedev, a Russian citizen with ties to celebrities, politicians and musicians, was keen to ingratiate himself with the British establishment. They wanted no part of it.
It was common knowledge that Lebedev’s father Alexander had served as a KGB agent in London during the 1980s and worked for its successor, the Foreign Intelligence Service, after the fall of the Soviet Union. He had then become a billionaire as owner of the National Reserve Bank, which held big stakes in Gazprom, the state oil giant, Aeroflot, the Russian airline, and a military jet manufacturer.
Lebedev Sr had styled himself a dissident but it was feared that he also belonged to a class of oligarchs who had licence from Putin to pose as opponents while actually furthering Russia’s interests in the West. He has since defended Putin’s invasion of Crimea, invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian-held areas of the peninsula and refused to make any public comment about the war in Ukraine.
MI6 was aware of such concerns but more troubled by the wider risk that Evgeny Lebedev might exploit his contact with British intelligence.
Despite Sawers’s clear response, though, Lebedev pushed back. He put Blackhurst under serious pressure to make the meeting happen. Blackhurst, in turn, made the request more than once. These further entreaties were ignored. Sawers had met newspaper proprietors from time to time but was not willing to make Lebedev one of them.
Details made their way down the Thames from Vauxhall Cross to City Hall, where Johnson was presiding as mayor. At least two of his senior advisers heard of Sawers’s refusal to meet Lebedev.
Johnson had by then been engaged in a years-long courtship with both Lebedev and his father. He and Lebedev Jr were friends, and Johnson had already enjoyed at least one stay at the businessman’s luxurious Umbrian villa, Palazzo Terranova, with all his flights and accommodation paid for by Lebedev.
Blackhurst and Sawers declined to comment. It remains unclear if Johnson was told by his aides about MI6’s concerns in 2013. One former aide said it was implausible that he could not have known, in no small part because Lebedev would probably have told Johnson himself. Lebedev, however, says he did not tell him.
“I think it’s intellectual laziness,” added another. “I don’t think that’s just true of Lebedev, I think that’s true of Boris’s relationships with a number of people.”
In any case, the friendship between Johnson and Lebedev continued to blossom — so much so that, almost a decade later, and almost immediately after arriving in Downing Street in July 2019, Johnson declared his intention to nominate Lebedev for a peerage.
But the intelligence assessment remained unchanged: the agencies felt Lebedev continued to pose a risk, prompting the House of Lords Appointments Commission (Holac) to advise Johnson to nominate someone else.
He refused to do so, declaring that any objections constituted “anti-Russianism”, and responded to reports last week about the controversy by suggesting that they did the bidding of Putin.
As Putin widens his assault on Ukraine, these events raise serious questions. How has Johnson become so close to Lebedev? And how was he able to overrule his own advisers, and the intelligence establishment, to give him a seat in the legislature?
The story of Johnson’s friendship with Lebedev starts in 2009, a year after he had arrived at City Hall. In January, Alexander Lebedev, then 50, had bought the Evening Standard, the ailing London newspaper owned by Lord Rothermere, the proprietor of several titles including the Daily Mail.
Months of secret talks about the sale had been facilitated by Geordie Greig, a mutual friend and journalist who was appointed editor of the Standard after the Lebedev takeover. He had edited Tatler, the high-society magazine that in 2007 crowned Evgeny Britain’s third most eligible bachelor.
The tabloids had also taken an interest in Lebedev, chronicling his dates with the singer Geri Halliwell — Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls — and the actress Joely Richardson. The gossip columnists had no shortage of encouragement from the “mystery man” himself. Yet neither he nor his father were well known at the top of the British establishment.
On June 6, 2009, the Lebedevs threw a black-tie fundraiser at Stud House, their home near Hampton Court Palace, west London, to raise money for a cancer charity set up in memory of Mikhail Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, who died in 1999.
The star of the show was Gorbachev, who had been the leader of the Soviet Union during Lebedev Sr’s time as a spy in London, and subsequently built a friendship with him. Other guests included Sarah Brown, the wife of the prime minister at the time, Gordon Brown, the author JK Rowling and Johnson, who was seated next to Evgeny.
It was the start of a friendship. On August 3, 2009, the pair went for lunch at the Blueprint Café, a fashionable restaurant near Tower Bridge overlooking the Thames. They started to text and call each other regularly.
Johnson, as mayor, had spotted an opportunity in a man who was desperate to please, build contacts and make his way in Britain. With his father based in Russia, Evgeny quickly acquired responsibility for the running of the Standard and The Independent.
Contact with Lebedev gradually increased. Johnson agreed to attend the Standard’s annual theatre awards, one of Evgeny’s projects, on November 23, 2009, and to attend a reception with him beforehand. On May 14, 2010, they went for a private lunch at Magdalen, near City Hall.
Six days after that meal, Johnson wrote to Lebedev with an unusually explicit request for a politician. He said he would be “thrilled” if the Standard and Independent could cover some of his mayoral projects, saying his team was “all set to make a presentation to Geordie!”, with whom he had also lunched weeks earlier.
Lebedev agreed, prompting the mayor to write: “Your support and that of the Evening Standard is much appreciated.”
Over the course of their early courtship, Johnson was perfectly aware of the young Lebedev’s links to the Russian state. In 2010 one of Lebedev’s pet projects was the idea of a Russian festival or cultural season to be held in London every year.
Johnson threw open the doors of City Hall to help make it happen, offering his “advice and assistance” and hosting a meeting in which, according to minutes, Lebedev said he would “lead discussions in establishing further substantial support from the Russian government”.
Johnson expressed concern about any suggestion that the festival might glorify the Soviet era, but was relaxed about Russia under Putin, who had recently completed his second term as president. “All agreed that what is worthy of celebration is ‘Russia now’,” state minutes of a meeting between the pair.
This accorded with Johnson’s wider approach as mayor, which was to encourage as many oligarchs as possible to settle and spend money in London. He even broke publicly with the government’s policy at the time on “libel tourism”. Johnson said Russian billionaires should be encouraged to use British courts to settle disputes.
“I have no shame in saying to the injured spouses of the world’s billionaires, if you want to take him to the cleaners . . . take him to the cleaners in London. Because London cleaners will be grateful for your business,” he declared. He also clashed with then chancellor George Osborne — who later himself became editor of the Standard — by objecting to a proposed “oligarch tax” for those buying property at the height of austerity.
Last week Johnson’s government vowed to clamp down on the use of “lawfare” and the British assets of these same individuals.
As Johnson approached the end of his second term as mayor, Lebedev’s Standard duly threw its weight behind his campaign for re-election in 2012, backing him in a front-page editorial that called him the “right choice” for the city.
The intervention, eight days before the vote, which Johnson narrowly won, came after more meetings between Johnson and Lebedev, one at Mark’s Club, a Mayfair private members’ establishment, and another at a location that City Hall would not disclose.
It could be argued that it is perfectly normal for a mayor to want to woo the owner of a newspaper with significant influence in the capital.
Lebedev was perfectly entitled to bestow hospitality and gifts on Johnson as long as it was all declared — which, ranging from lunches to a gift of a Samuel Johnson diary, it was.
But after Johnson’s re-election, the relationship changed.
Johnson started travelling to Palazzo Terranova, the Lebedevs’ villa nestling in the hills of Umbria, and Castello di Santa Eurasia, their nearby castle, often flying commercially or on private jets paid for by the Russian.
According to previous guests, such parties are not easily forgotten. Vodka and caviar are plentiful; dinner is followed by music and dancing. Stephen Fry, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson have been seen at some events.
“They follow a similar pattern. Pre-dinner drinks would start quite late, around 9pm,” said one frequent attendee. “Dinner is 10pm, late by our standards. There is music and dancing afterwards. We’re talking Elton John and the Pet Shop Boys, not clubbing.
“There was very fine alcohol. There was vodka if you want it. The wine was very good. Evgeny was a very generous host. His father was often there. It was a mix of politicians and celebrities, lots of actors.”
Alexander Lebedev’s activities in Umbria have been linked to “espionage and interference” in a book published last year by Jacopo Iacoboni, a financial reporter for the newspaper La Stampa. Oligarchi, How Putin’s Friends are Buying Italy cited an Italian intelligence rerport that includes allegations that Lebedev Sr has been involved in attempts by Gazprom and its largest shareholder, the Kremlin, to influence the energy politics of foreign governments. It includes details casting doubt on whether he ever fully severed his ties with Russian intelligence. Evgeny Lebedev has denied the allegations levelled against his father.
Johnson became so close to Lebedev that he visited the castle in Perugia every October for five successive years, from 2012 to 2016. He would sometimes even bring his wife.
All Johnson’s expenses were covered by Lebedev, including his transport to and from the airport. Twice Johnson used the chauffeur-driven vehicle of the Evening Standard’s then editor, Sarah Sands. Previously undisclosed documents show he accepted £7,150 worth of flights, cars and accommodation from Lebedev between 2013 and 2015, justifying them in hand-signed expenses returns as “networking” events.
While some of Lebedev’s soirées were relatively tame affairs, others appear to have been far more raucous. They include an event hosted at the Palazzo Terranova in October 2016, attended by Johnson, during which Katie Price, the glamour model also known as Jordan, is said to have lifted her top to expose her breasts to her fellow guests. Johnson, then foreign secretary, is said to have been seated next to her.
In the period in which Johnson was growing closer to Lebedev, the Russian businessman made no secret of his political views. He used his public profile on Twitter and occasional columns in the Evening Standard and Independent to promote views resembling the Kremlin line on matters ranging from the assassination of Litvinenko, the defector murdered by Russia on British soil, to the war in Syria.
On August 10, 2013, for example, he had tweeted an article casting doubt on who had poisoned Litvinenko, writing: “Was Litvinenko murdered by MI6? . . . Certainly more to it than the generally accepted Putin link.”
His comments came six years after the Crown Prosecution Service announced it was charging Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB agent, with the murder of Litvinenko after it was passed evidence by the Metropolitan Police showing that he had poisoned him with polonium-210, a highly radioactive material. Traces of the poison were also discovered in three hotels Lugovoi had stayed at in London.
In February 2012, 18 months before Lebedev’s tweet, the CPS had charged a second Russian, Dmitry Kovtun, as Lugovoi’s accomplice.
Two years later, the government launched a public inquiry into the assassination following a sustained campaign by Litvinenko’s family, who believed he had been working for MI6 and was killed on the orders of the Kremlin.
Lebedev continued to promote such views, sharing an article about Litvinenko by Mary Dejevsky, a controversial writer he employed, on January 30, 2015. He wrote: “Russia’s complicity [is] still far from proven.”
The following January, a public inquiry found the two Russians had carried out the killing.
Today Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, called for an investigation into Lebedev’s peerage. She said he should have known by 2013 that it was a conspiracy theory to suggest MI6 was behind her husband’s assassination.
She added: “In January 2015 the public inquiry started and every material was heard during this public inquiry, it would be in the public domain. You cannot ignore this. Do you believe this was MI6 or not, Lebedev needs to answer yes or no, or apologise for what he did say.”
Asked whether his peerage should now be reviewed, she said: “I think it should because I disagreed from the very beginning of this. It should not be explained as Russophobia, not at all. Of course I am against any Russophobe action.”
On the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, Lebedev was similarly candid. As his father continued to invest his millions in the occupied area — which is subject to western sanctions — Evgeny, in Britain, appeared to downplay the severity of Putin’s actions.
In March 2014, shortly after acquiring a TV station, Lebedev defended the invasion on The Andrew Marr Show on the BBC.
He said Crimea had been “for many years” part of Russia and only “recently” part of Ukraine, that the subject was “very complicated”, and that “Russia has reached out to the West and I think now it’s time to stop Cold War rhetoric on both sides”.
On the referendum held in the territory — a poll used by Putin to justify the annexation but which has been widely discredited and condemned as illegal — Lebedev stated: “even though I would say that the referendum may have not been held under the right circumstances, I think the outcome of the vote would be the same.”
He went on to downplay fears that Putin’s ambitions stretched further, telling the programme that he believed Russia would not be making “any further incursions into any land”.
Days earlier, he had used a column in the Evening Standard to say that most Russians thanked Putin for previously “unimaginable” freedoms and a “regained sense of national pride”. He also claimed that Crimea may now “function least dysfunctionally as a Russian-speaking independent nation, this culturally and historically Russian blob, jetting out into the Black Sea from Ukrainian shores.”.
On April 30, 2014, Lebedev posted an article by Seumas Milne, who would later become Jeremy Corbyn’s director of communications, about Russia’s invasion of Crimea, entitled “It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war”. In it, Milne blamed Nato for the conflict, said Putin’s actions were “clearly defensive” and welcomed Russia’s role as a counter-weight to US imperialism. On Twitter Lebedev remarked that the piece was “long overdue” and “eloquently argued”.
Following the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president and Putin ally, Lebedev acknowledged that he had been “far from perfect” but nevertheless “democratically elected.”
“As we are now seeing very clearly there, and throughout the Middle East, and indeed throughout the whole of history, those who overthrow governments have their faults too,” he argued. “It is not surprising that the far-right elements of this Ukrainian revolution will worry Russians, and that must worry their president.”
Similar arguments have also been used by Putin, who has sought to justify his invasion of Ukraine by vowing to “de-Nazify” the country.
His praise for Putin did not stop there. On September 8, 2015, as the Russian leader began to take an ever-increasing interest in the bitter civil war in Syria, Lebedev said that Putin had “shown leadership” in the conflict and urged the West to accept his offer of an anti-Isis coalition. This was dubbed the “grand bargain”. While western leaders were also calling for unity of purpose on Syria, their plans — unlike Putin’s — did not envisage Bashar al-Assad, the brutal Syrian president, remaining in power.
Days later, on September 29, Lebedev wrote another piece saying Assad was the least worst option for “our security and interests”, adding: “On this point I am emphatically with Putin.” He also rebuked those who deemed Russia to be a “mortal threat” to the West.
A fortnight after these remarks, Johnson travelled to Perugia for another weekend of partying.
As his eyes turned to national politics and he returned to parliament as MP for Uxbridge & South Ruislip, his relationship with Lebedev became closer still. The pair had become friends and confidants, holidaying together, exchanging advice, and discussing life as well as politics.
In early 2016, with the EU referendum approaching, Lebedev was present for the evening when Johnson invited Michael Gove to his Islington home and the pair, in the company of their wives, Marina and Sarah, decided to back Brexit.
Lebedev was there as they dined and drank. He is also alleged by two sources to have subsequently tried to persuade Sands, the Evening Standard editor, to back leaving the EU as well. She apparently refused.
In the days after the EU referendum, Johnson was appointed foreign secretary — seen by many as a consolation prize from Theresa May after Gove, with whom he had plotted alongside Lebedev months earlier, blew up his leadership campaign.
Johnson’s new role gave him oversight of MI6. Traditionally, if C — the head of the agency — receives intelligence about a prominent British national or resident who poses a potential security risk, they will refer it directly to head of the British civil service, the cabinet secretary, who can then decide on the most appropriate course of action.
It is unknown if Lebedev prompted such a warning from the security services, but Johnson did dismay Foreign Office officials by continuing to travel to Lebedev’s castle.
This included a trip in April 2018, weeks after Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned in Salisbury. He did so without his close protection officers. Johnson has never provided an account of the visit, or explained why he went.
One of those who worked with Johnson said: “I was aware of Boris’s relationship with [Lebedev]. It struck me as a bit odd. It seemed to me to be someone who carried a certain amount of risk.
“I remember [the trip]. It seemed a strange thing to do because he really didn’t have to.”
They also believe that Johnson was naive to the potential risks involved in associating with oligarchs, adding that his views on Russian civilisation had blurred his view on individuals with links to the Kremlin under Putin.
“I don’t think there’s anything sinister, I think he [Boris] just thinks he’s not doing anything untoward and [doesn’t see] why should he adjust his own behaviour.”
Tortoise, a journalism website, has since reported that, after the Salisbury poisonings, Alexander Lebedev offered himself up as an interlocutor between Johnson and Putin.
Johnson and Evgeny remained close. Just 24 hours after winning a landslide general election in December 2019, he attended Alexander Lebedev’s 60th birthday party — an event that doubled as a Christmas do and election celebration — at one of the Lebedevs’ London residences.
By this point, Johnson made it known to aides in No 10 that he intended to nominate Evgeny Lebedev for a peerage.
One said he had started speaking about it almost immediately after arriving in Downing Street.
“He pathologically wanted to get this peerage over the line,” a source said. They added: “It was ‘Lebedev needs a peerage, he needs a peerage’ . . . it was immediate.”
After putting forward the nomination, the Holac secretariat, a team composed of Cabinet Office officials, set about vetting him, as they do all candidates.
The process involves contacting various agencies — ranging from HM Revenue & Customs to the Metropolitan Police to MI5 and MI6 — to determine whether there is any potentially disqualifying information.
Traditionally, HMRC will give a green, amber or red light to signify its level of approval.
The security services are more subtle, but in this case their verdict was clear. They informed the secretariat that they had national security concerns about Lebedev.
Holac duly wrote to Johnson on March 17, 2020, saying the commission could not support Lebedev and suggesting he back somebody else.
Johnson immediately expressed his objections to his most senior aides. He declared it must be Russophobia and demanded something be done about the situation.
It was news to one of them that he wanted to nominate Lebedev at all — and so it was assumed to be a joke.
Johnson, though, was serious. In fact, he even made time to meet Lebedev at his home in west London 48 hours later — the same day that he gave a speech in which he told Britons they must stay at home if possible to help tackle the first wave of Covid-19.
It is thought that the prime minister later instructed his principal private secretary (PPS), Martin Reynolds — since given the name “Party Marty” for his role in the Partygate scandal — to challenge the intelligence assessment on Lebedev.
As one of Johnson’s most trusted officials, Reynolds was the “natural person” to handle such a highly sensitive and secretive matter. As PPS he was often the one who “handles intel”. Reynolds refused to comment when approached.
According to a source, Johnson was demanding that the security service provide a specific reason — in other words, a smoking gun — demonstrating why his good friend Lebedev was not a suitable figure to sit in the Lords.
Civil servants were stunned by this move. They said it was unprecedented for a prime minister to question such an assessment and that the system of vetting only worked if politicians heeded the advice of the security services.
They also said Johnson’s response mistook the nature of such intelligence, which is based on the risk a person might pose, more than one past deed or event.
In any case, the fundamental assessment did not change — but intelligence officials are thought to have told Johnson there was not one specific reason to block him. That was enough for Johnson to renominate Lebedev, telling Holac that the previous issue had been resolved.
A few issues remained, however, not least because the nominee wanted to name himself Lord Lebedev of Moscow. Having been told “no”, he then tried again with Hampton Court.
First, the Kremlin blocked the use of the Russian capital in his title. Then David White, the Garter Principal King of Arms, the senior official with responsibility for titles, a role that has existed since 1415, blocked the use in a title of a royal palace — which would have broken with centuries of protocol.
Instead, Lebedev was welcomed into the chamber as Lord Lebedev of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation.
Since joining the chamber in November 2020, Lebedev has not contributed in a single debate or cast a single vote.
He has submitted two questions, both shortly after an article appeared questioning his contributions.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, has written to the commission urging it to review the peerage in light of the disclosures and to release the advice it provided to the prime minister.
In his letter, Starmer wrote: I understand the that the role of the commission has never been to publicise the advice it provides on political nominees but reports of the political views, personal links, and financial interests of Lord Lebedev are deeply troubling.
“The accusations made by Lord Lebedev that the British security services had any involvement in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko is insulting. I have seen first-hand the real impact of Russian interference in Britain and the difficulties prosecutors encounter when dealing with those who act on behalf of Putin. This is clearly a matter of national security.”
On Friday, Lebedev for the second time wrote in the Evening Standard to dismiss claims about him, saying he was not “some Russian agent” or a “security risk”. He dismissed “speculation” in the media, said he opposed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and denied interfering in the editorial coverage of his papers. He also warned against descending into “Russophobia, like any other phobia, bigotry or discrimination”. His father, who is thought to remain in Moscow, has not spoken.
Whatever Lebedev says, Johnson will continue to face questions about the peerage and about what one aide described as the “striking” frequency of their contact.
Lebedev rejected the claim that his father had acted on Russia’s behalf in Italy or in the wake of Skripal poisoning. He said that he was entitled to change his opinions over time and that they had changed in response to Putin’s actions.
No 10 continues to insist that Lebedev was given a peerage due to his charitable work and contribution to society and public service. A government spokesman said: “All individuals nominated for a peerage are done so in recognition of their contribution to society and all peerages are vetted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission.”
Evgeny Lebedev on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, March 30, 2014, after putin annexed crimea
Andrew Marr: You own a lot of property in the Crimea. Do you still own a lot of property in Crimea, are you worried about your holdings there, and what do you think about what is going on there?
Evgeny Lebedev: Yes, I still own properties in Crimea, hopefully. I am very concerned. But I think what I would say is that it’s very complicated and textured subject that a lot of time is misunderstood in the West.
Crimea, what people don’t realise, has for many, many years, many centuries, [been] part of Russia and only very recently part of Ukraine.
So even though I would say that the referendum may have not been held under the right circumstances, I think the actual outcome of the vote would have been the same.
One thing I would say is that yesterday we’ve seen that Russia has reached out to the West and I think now it’s time to stop Cold War rhetoric on both sides and start talking. The Cold War’s over — let’s not start another one.
Andrew Marr: And in the middle of that Cold War rhetoric do you think there’s a lot of — you must talk to them — a lot of worry, a bit of a shiver going through the oligarchs in London about what is going to happen to them and their position here?
Evgeny Lebedev: To be honest with you, Andrew, I don’t really speak to a lot of oligarchs in London. But I think [if] sanctions were to go any further, I think the City of London and London, London’s economy, would have been affected. But I think now there is not going to be any further incursions into any land and definitely not eastern Crimea, and definitely not anywhere further. So I think it’s now time to talk.
