MP asks if ex-KGB agent tried to arrange private Johnson and Lavrov call | Yvette Cooper requests more details about Boris Johnson’s meeting with Alexander Lebedev in Italy in 2018

5 comments

  1. This is the next Johnson scandal 😂

    Tory MPs are just going to want him gone, sooner rather than later

  2. Since the Guardian’s account of Yvette Cooper’s questions to Junior Foreign Office minister Vicky Ford is missing quite a bit, I include a transcript from the [parliament TV video](https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/a73b15d6-80ca-484e-9bf1-6cabcc5ab274) where she appears at around the 11:14:20 timestamp. It’s lengthy, but very good from Cooper IMO.

    Yvette Cooper:
    > Yesterday the prime minister admitted to the home accounts and public affairs committee chairs that in April 2018 as foreign secretary he met with the former KGB officer Alexander Lebedev, father of Lord Lebedev, in Italy, without any officials, without any security.

    > He went there straight from a NATO meeting where the top item on the agenda was Russia at the height of the Salisbury poisoning crisis . . .

    > On the 20th of May this year, Alexander Lebedev was sanctioned by the Canadian government – a Five Eyes partner of the UK – for being one of the fourteen identified people who have directly enabled Vladimir Putin’s senseless war in Ukraine and bear responsibility for the pain and suffering of the people of Ukraine.

    > The UK has not yet sanctioned him.

    > The charges against the Prime Minister are not just about lack of integrity, they are about complete disregard for basic national security and the patriotic interests of this country.

    > And those charges lie not just with the Prime Minister, but with all of those who have enabled him and covered up for him on this issue.

    > So. Did the Foreign Office, the Home Office, and the Security Service know about this meeting in advance?

    > Was a detailed record made, after the event, of the meeting? Because there are rumours that the foreign secretary was too drunk to properly remember. Is that true?

    > There are also rumours that Alexander Lebedev was trying to arrange a phone call from the meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. Is that true? Did that phone call happen?

    > The record of ministers’ interests says the foreign secretary accepted hospitality in Italy for himself and a guest. But he traveled home alone. Who was that guest, and did that put him in a compromising position?

    > The Prime Minister referred yesterday to several meetings with Alexander Lebedev without officials. When were the others? Were any of them while he was Prime Minister?

    > And the shadow security minister has been asking for confirmation that this meeting happened for months. So why have home office ministers, cabinet office ministers, and foreign office ministers all been covering up?

    > It is bad enough covering up for parties and breaking the law, but covering up over national security is a total disgrace. It puts all our safety and security at risk. It’s not just the Prime Minister, it is the whole government that is letting the country down.

    As reported by the Guardian:
    > In reply, Vicky Ford, a junior Foreign Office minister, said: “I take national security issues seriously,” but she failed to address the question substantively.

    Later in the same session (11:24:08) , Labour’s Ian Byrne asked:

    > According to intelligence reports that I have seen, a serving FSB officer reported in 2017, and I quote, “Alexander Lebedev is considered by the FSB to be an important asset.”

    > More recently he has significantly expanded his businesses in occupied Crimea, pleaded with the Kremlin for economic help for occupied Crimea, and was revealed as the indirect owner of a company called Energomash, which supplies the Russian nuclear programme.

    > How is it possible to stay in office if he is conspiring with an agent of the Russian state?

    There was again no substantive answer from Ford.

    Also from The Guardian’s article:

    > Last month the [Tortoise website reported](https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2022/06/28/londongrad-paul-caruana-galizia/) that Lebedev had sought to set up an unmonitored line between Johnson, the then foreign secretary, and Lavrov to discuss the Salisbury poisonings that had happened nearly two months earlier. But the call never took place because Johnson overslept.

    And even more, on Lebedev and Ergomash, if you can take it, in Business Insider’s April 2022 piece [*Alexander Lebedev met senior Russian government official weeks before invasion of Ukraine*](https://www.businessinsider.com/lebedev-met-senior-russian-official-weeks-before-ukraine-invasion-2022-4)

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