Chair of the Labour Party Anneliese Dodds has today written to her Conservative opposite number asking him to explain why one in ten of his partyâs MPs were getting cash from an oligarch accused of corruption at the heart of Vladimir Putinâs Russia.
The BBC has revealed that 34 Conservative MPs received some ÂŁ700,000 from businesses owned by the Russian businessman Viktor Fedotov. The recent âPandora Papersâ scandal suggested that Fedotov secretly benefitted from an alleged $4bn fraud in Putinâs Russia. The state-owned oil and gas company gave hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to a firm called VNIIST, but leaked audit reports in 2008 suggest the work was not carried out and instead the money was apparently siphoned off. The âPandora Papersâ showed Fedotov to have held a stake in VNIIST, hidden behind a complex web of offshore structures.
In the UK, Fedotov jointly owns Aquind with fellow oligarch Alexander Temerko. Temerko is a Conservative Party activist and avowedly personal friend of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and he too has given ÂŁ700,000 to the party in recent years. Aquind is in the process of bidding to build an undersea power connector between Portsmouth and Normandy, which the Government has deemed to be a ânationally significant infrastructure projectâ. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng is due to decide whether to appoint Aquind to the project in just 16 daysâ time. Three separate Conservative Ministers have already had to recuse themselves from making the decision because of personal links to Aquind.
In her letter to Oliver Dowden, Anneliese Dodds links the secrecy over Fedotovâs money to that over the Conservativesâ ÂŁ50k-a-head Leaderâs Group and its ÂŁ250k-a-head Advisory Group, both of which offer donors access to senior ministers.
The Conservatives have refused to say who is on each group, when they meet and what they discuss. In her letter, Dodds asks Dowden: âWhy canât you level with the public and tell us just what it is that people get for handing over huge sums of money to your party?â
The letter comes after Portsmouth South MP Stephen Morgan said that the disclosures were the âfinal nail in the coffinâ for AQUIND yesterday. The City MP recently submitted a 6,200 signature petition to Parliament as part of a string of actions to oppose the project.
Labour Party Chair Anneliese Dodds, said:
âIt is extraordinary that a company co-owned by an oligarch allegedly linked to a huge corruption scandal in Putinâs Russia is bankrolling one in ten Tory MPs. And in two weeksâ time, the Conservative Government is going to decide whether to give this man’s company the right to build infrastructure vital to our national security.
âWe have no idea what his money is buying. Just as we have no idea what the members of the so-called âLeaderâs Groupâ and âAdvisory Boardâ are getting for the tens of thousands they hand over in cash to the Conservative Party.
âIf the accusations of corruption are correct, the Tories should hand this money back. And they should tell us who is giving the party money and what theyâre getting in return. Otherwise itâs clear thereâs one rule for senior Conservatives and another for everyone else.â
Portsmouth South MP Stephen Morgan said:
âThe Panorama investigation has revealed the staggering alleged corruption of AQUIND owners and raises further suspicion about their cosy relationships with government.
âThere are now serious questions to answer about how AQUIND owners have made their money and whether we can trust them to build nationally significant infrastructure. Perhaps most concerningly, we have no clarity on what Tory MPs promised them before lining their pockets and accepting their cash.
âOne thing is clear: Ministers must immediately stop AQUIND, once and for all. Any pretence that this Tory Government is able to make an impartial decision is now laughableâ.
