David Warburton has been suspended after sex and drugs claims. Documents show he used his status to back a businessman without declaring the loan
–
Last March, David Warburton proudly shared a copy of a letter he had sent the Treasury requesting financial help for musicians during the pandemic. The Conservative MP for Somerton and Frome signed off his Instagram post: “Don’t ask, don’t get.”
Warburton, 56, a married father of two, chairs the all-party parliamentary group on music, having played guitar in an amateur rock band and started his career as a music teacher. He volunteers as an organist at his local church.
Days later, on March 12, Warburton sent another message, again using official parliamentary notepaper, once more lobbying a public body. This time, the letter was supposed to remain secret.
It was a character reference asking the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to reconsider its assessment of a Russian-born businessman, Roman Joukovski.
Joukovski, 53, had made millions advising Russian oligarchs on how to secure visas to the UK and structure their wealth offshore. He had also lent Warburton [£150,000 in 2017](https://archive.ph/uW4K7) at 8 per cent interest from an offshore trust in the Seychelles. Nowhere did the MP declare this financial relationship.
Over the years, Joukovski had attracted colourful clients — among them Russia’s wealthiest woman, the grandson of Kazakhstan’s dictator and ultra-wealthy Chinese investors — but also controversy.
In 2008, the regulator refused to give him the authority to monitor money laundering or compliance with financial regulations at his employer, a wealth manager. In 2014, [the FCA refused to certify him as a fit and proper person](https://archive.ph/gu3gw) and said he had failed to satisfy them that he was “capable of acting honestly and with the level of integrity we would expect of an approved person”. In 2019, it launched an investigation into one of his companies, later concluding that it “dishonestly or recklessly” provided misleading information about its visa schemes and its relationship with a client, and forcing it into administration.
Joukovski was trying to persuade the FCA to change its stance and was able to draw on support from Warburton, a quiet but experienced member of parliament, who submitted a character statement backing him. The final version was almost word-for-word the same letter drafted days earlier by Joukovski’s solicitor, a partner at a City lawyer.
“Dear Sirs,” it read. “I am writing this reference on behalf of Roman Joukovski. I was introduced to him through a mutual friend some four years ago . . . I know Roman socially and also in relation to his business activities. Dealing with him during this period I have formed a positive view of Roman; in my judgement he is extremely capable and an honest and straightforward person whom I trust.” He signed off: “I am happy to provide any further information that might assist the FCA in its assessment of Roman.”
A year on, Warburton is not the same public figure. [He has been accused of sexual misconduct by three women and of procuring cocaine](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tory-mp-david-warburton-suspended-after-sex-and-drugs-allegations-h3t8ghj0q). The Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme, a parliamentary watchdog set up after the #MeToo scandal prompted a surge in allegations in Westminster, is looking into the formal complaints of two former parliamentary aides.
The Conservative Party suspended him last week. Warburton claimed that he had “enormous amounts of defence”, then admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital for what one relative described as severe shock and stress. His wife — who also manages his office — has said she is standing by him.
The new correspondence about the loan raises fresh questions about the integrity of parliament.
The story of Warburton’s relationship with Joukovski begins in 2017, two years after he had been elected to parliament with a 20,000 majority.
Until that point, the new MP had kept a low profile. As a teenager he had been expelled from his grammar school in Reading for “continual bad behaviour”, including smoking cigarettes in the cricket pavilion. In his maiden speech, he joked that the joy of life was doing what others said one could not. Yet his rebellion had mellowed. He backed Brexit in 2017, but quietly. He rarely intervened in the chamber or rebelled against the party whip. He appeared a classic Tory backbencher: a mild Eurosceptic dedicated to local issues, mostly internet and transport connectivity in Somerset.
He had married into money and prestige — his wife, Harriet, is the daughter of a former British consul-general in Los Angeles — and made money of his own, having pivoted from teaching to mobile phone technology and commercial property. He had two young children, a son and a daughter, who went to a private boarding school.
As an MP, he earned a salary of £76,000. His wife earned up to £51,000 as his taxpayer-funded personal assistant and press officer, also working part-time at an estate agency in Somerset. The couple owned a property in their constituency and declared rental income exceeding £10,000 a year. According to sources, such revenue did not nearly cover the luxury expenses to which Warburton felt entitled as a member of parliament, be it two lots of school fees, holidays in the sun or regular after-work drinks and dinners.
In the summer of 2017, Warburton decided on a new source of revenue: he would convert his marital home into an Airbnb rental. He and his wife had for years lived in the Old Vicarage in Glastonbury, near his seat, an eight-bedroom property complete with a hot tub, games room and wine cellar. Now they would downsize. His wife would run the new venture part-time, while continuing to run his office in SW1. The only wrinkle in the plan: Warburton did not have the cash to renovate the property, which was valued at £1.2 million.
He turned to his new acquaintance, Joukovski, in the July of that year.
The Russian had acquired British citizenship, moved to Hampstead, north London, and spent a decade wooing the establishment. His firm’s website claimed he had a “bold vision: to reimagine finance using fresh thinking”. But his firms specialised in securing Tier 1 “golden visas” for oligarchs — a scheme since shut down by the British government because of “security concerns”, including the illegitimate wealth of applicants. Joukovski’s firm sidestepped the rules, according to the FCA: it engineered a scheme in which, rather than investing £2 million in the British economy, the supposed threshold for securing a visa, people could pay just £400,000.
With a string of ultra-wealthy clients, the businessman had secured audiences for himself and his associates with Princes William and Harry and Sir John Major. He brought British associates on business trips to Moscow and yacht holidays in the Mediterranean.
So many tories raping children and getting paid by Russia.
But this country supports thier actions when they vote them in. Well done England.
As much as I consider myself more of an internationalist, who’s not particularly patriotic, I’m still able to get righteously angered by the fact we’re being led by fucking traitors!
Quick send him of a flight to kyiv. That will fix the russian issue.
It’s so cheap to corrupt our politicians that you don’t even need to pay them, just give them a loan. I always find it shocking just how cheaply these people are willing to sell out democracy
[deleted]
Our politicians are so cheap to buy.
Honestly, it’s rather dissapointing that proper Banana republics have a better sense of worth.
My MP received money from a Russian business person and when I asked him about it, he came back with some copy about “how the money was from a pro Ukrainian exiled Russian and we really must do our best to root out Russian corruption in the government ”. Some very minor searching on the internet went on to show that in fact the business person still had very active links to the Kremlin. It just sickens me that these people can be bought so cheaply. They would happily sell the country for nothing.
Oh look another Class A self serving duplicitous badgerlicker, what a surprise.
9 comments
David Warburton has been suspended after sex and drugs claims. Documents show he used his status to back a businessman without declaring the loan
–
Last March, David Warburton proudly shared a copy of a letter he had sent the Treasury requesting financial help for musicians during the pandemic. The Conservative MP for Somerton and Frome signed off his Instagram post: “Don’t ask, don’t get.”
Warburton, 56, a married father of two, chairs the all-party parliamentary group on music, having played guitar in an amateur rock band and started his career as a music teacher. He volunteers as an organist at his local church.
Days later, on March 12, Warburton sent another message, again using official parliamentary notepaper, once more lobbying a public body. This time, the letter was supposed to remain secret.
It was a character reference asking the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to reconsider its assessment of a Russian-born businessman, Roman Joukovski.
Joukovski, 53, had made millions advising Russian oligarchs on how to secure visas to the UK and structure their wealth offshore. He had also lent Warburton [£150,000 in 2017](https://archive.ph/uW4K7) at 8 per cent interest from an offshore trust in the Seychelles. Nowhere did the MP declare this financial relationship.
Over the years, Joukovski had attracted colourful clients — among them Russia’s wealthiest woman, the grandson of Kazakhstan’s dictator and ultra-wealthy Chinese investors — but also controversy.
In 2008, the regulator refused to give him the authority to monitor money laundering or compliance with financial regulations at his employer, a wealth manager. In 2014, [the FCA refused to certify him as a fit and proper person](https://archive.ph/gu3gw) and said he had failed to satisfy them that he was “capable of acting honestly and with the level of integrity we would expect of an approved person”. In 2019, it launched an investigation into one of his companies, later concluding that it “dishonestly or recklessly” provided misleading information about its visa schemes and its relationship with a client, and forcing it into administration.
Joukovski was trying to persuade the FCA to change its stance and was able to draw on support from Warburton, a quiet but experienced member of parliament, who submitted a character statement backing him. The final version was almost word-for-word the same letter drafted days earlier by Joukovski’s solicitor, a partner at a City lawyer.
“Dear Sirs,” it read. “I am writing this reference on behalf of Roman Joukovski. I was introduced to him through a mutual friend some four years ago . . . I know Roman socially and also in relation to his business activities. Dealing with him during this period I have formed a positive view of Roman; in my judgement he is extremely capable and an honest and straightforward person whom I trust.” He signed off: “I am happy to provide any further information that might assist the FCA in its assessment of Roman.”
A year on, Warburton is not the same public figure. [He has been accused of sexual misconduct by three women and of procuring cocaine](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tory-mp-david-warburton-suspended-after-sex-and-drugs-allegations-h3t8ghj0q). The Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme, a parliamentary watchdog set up after the #MeToo scandal prompted a surge in allegations in Westminster, is looking into the formal complaints of two former parliamentary aides.
The Conservative Party suspended him last week. Warburton claimed that he had “enormous amounts of defence”, then admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital for what one relative described as severe shock and stress. His wife — who also manages his office — has said she is standing by him.
The new correspondence about the loan raises fresh questions about the integrity of parliament.
>>[Warburton’s letter to the FCA – image](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F8f331dd8-b819-11ec-b9c2-2038a863bceb.jpg)
*A Russian cash cow*
The story of Warburton’s relationship with Joukovski begins in 2017, two years after he had been elected to parliament with a 20,000 majority.
Until that point, the new MP had kept a low profile. As a teenager he had been expelled from his grammar school in Reading for “continual bad behaviour”, including smoking cigarettes in the cricket pavilion. In his maiden speech, he joked that the joy of life was doing what others said one could not. Yet his rebellion had mellowed. He backed Brexit in 2017, but quietly. He rarely intervened in the chamber or rebelled against the party whip. He appeared a classic Tory backbencher: a mild Eurosceptic dedicated to local issues, mostly internet and transport connectivity in Somerset.
He had married into money and prestige — his wife, Harriet, is the daughter of a former British consul-general in Los Angeles — and made money of his own, having pivoted from teaching to mobile phone technology and commercial property. He had two young children, a son and a daughter, who went to a private boarding school.
As an MP, he earned a salary of £76,000. His wife earned up to £51,000 as his taxpayer-funded personal assistant and press officer, also working part-time at an estate agency in Somerset. The couple owned a property in their constituency and declared rental income exceeding £10,000 a year. According to sources, such revenue did not nearly cover the luxury expenses to which Warburton felt entitled as a member of parliament, be it two lots of school fees, holidays in the sun or regular after-work drinks and dinners.
In the summer of 2017, Warburton decided on a new source of revenue: he would convert his marital home into an Airbnb rental. He and his wife had for years lived in the Old Vicarage in Glastonbury, near his seat, an eight-bedroom property complete with a hot tub, games room and wine cellar. Now they would downsize. His wife would run the new venture part-time, while continuing to run his office in SW1. The only wrinkle in the plan: Warburton did not have the cash to renovate the property, which was valued at £1.2 million.
He turned to his new acquaintance, Joukovski, in the July of that year.
The Russian had acquired British citizenship, moved to Hampstead, north London, and spent a decade wooing the establishment. His firm’s website claimed he had a “bold vision: to reimagine finance using fresh thinking”. But his firms specialised in securing Tier 1 “golden visas” for oligarchs — a scheme since shut down by the British government because of “security concerns”, including the illegitimate wealth of applicants. Joukovski’s firm sidestepped the rules, according to the FCA: it engineered a scheme in which, rather than investing £2 million in the British economy, the supposed threshold for securing a visa, people could pay just £400,000.
With a string of ultra-wealthy clients, the businessman had secured audiences for himself and his associates with Princes William and Harry and Sir John Major. He brought British associates on business trips to Moscow and yacht holidays in the Mediterranean.
So many tories raping children and getting paid by Russia.
But this country supports thier actions when they vote them in. Well done England.
As much as I consider myself more of an internationalist, who’s not particularly patriotic, I’m still able to get righteously angered by the fact we’re being led by fucking traitors!
Quick send him of a flight to kyiv. That will fix the russian issue.
It’s so cheap to corrupt our politicians that you don’t even need to pay them, just give them a loan. I always find it shocking just how cheaply these people are willing to sell out democracy
[deleted]
Our politicians are so cheap to buy.
Honestly, it’s rather dissapointing that proper Banana republics have a better sense of worth.
My MP received money from a Russian business person and when I asked him about it, he came back with some copy about “how the money was from a pro Ukrainian exiled Russian and we really must do our best to root out Russian corruption in the government ”. Some very minor searching on the internet went on to show that in fact the business person still had very active links to the Kremlin. It just sickens me that these people can be bought so cheaply. They would happily sell the country for nothing.
Oh look another Class A self serving duplicitous badgerlicker, what a surprise.