{"id":410578,"date":"2025-09-09T13:54:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T13:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/410578\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T13:54:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T13:54:10","slug":"boris-johnson-secretly-lobbied-uae-for-billion-dollar-private-venture-leak-suggests-boris-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/410578\/","title":{"rendered":"Boris Johnson secretly lobbied UAE for billion-dollar private venture, leak suggests | Boris Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"

In early 2024, a vape lobbyist, a Vote Leave campaigner and a Vienna banker set out to persuade the rulers of an oil-rich Gulf emirate to give them a billion dollars. For the plan to work, leaked files suggest, they needed a frontman who had some pull with the sheikhs. So they hired Boris Johnson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His time as the <\/strong>UK\u2019s prime minister had ended less than two years earlier and he had left parliament. But Johnson retained relationships cultivated during his time in power. The Boris Files, a cache of documents<\/a> seen by the Guardian, suggest he has sought to harness these relationships for self-enrichment.<\/p>\n

The leaked files raise questions about whether Johnson broke ethics rules by lobbying a top foreign official to \u201csecure his patronage\u201d for a business venture that stood to make him <\/strong>millions.<\/p>\n

In need of funding, Bia Advisory, a largely unknown \u201cclimate finance solutions\u201d venture, hired the ex-PM as its \u201cprincipal adviser\u201d. The idea was to deploy Johnson \u2013 charismatic and well connected after his years as mayor of London, foreign secretary and prime minister \u2013 to open doors in the desert.<\/p>\n

Since hosting the 2023 climate summit, the United Arab Emirates\u2019 rulers have been keen to look green, channelling some of their immense fossil fuel revenues into sustainable projects. Abu Dhabi, the richest of the emirates, keeps a $300bn investment fund, Mubadala. Securing Mubadala\u2019s backing was \u201cthe big prize\u201d, Johnson\u2019s staffer told his new partners. And from his time in Downing Street, Johnson knew the boss.<\/p>\n

The staffer was Shelley Williams-Walker. She helped run Johnson\u2019s Downing Street operation, then became one of three aides at the Office of Boris Johnson, a limited company. Like all former prime ministers, Johnson can claim \u00a3115,000 a year in taxpayer funds but may only use it for public duties.<\/p>\n

His office\u2019s role in his commercial activities raises questions about whether these funds, released under the public duty costs allowance (PDCA), have been misused. \u201cThis story is rubbish,\u201d he said. \u201cThe PDCA has been used entirely in accordance with the rules. The Guardian should change its name to Pravda.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did not respond to questions about Bia Advisory and his activities in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

Following the Guardian\u2019s revelations this week that Johnson may have broken ethics rules over his dealings in Saudi Arabia<\/a> and Venezuela<\/a>, senior Labour and Liberal Democrats politicians have called for an investigation<\/a> into his use of public funds.<\/p>\n

Ex-ministers are prohibited from lobbying foreign government contacts they gained in office \u201cfor the purposes of securing business\u201d. But in April 2024, while his aides were dealing with concerned inquires from an ethics watchdog about his role, Johnson boarded an Etihad Airways flight to Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

Personal stake<\/p>\n

The leaked documents, obtained by the transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets<\/a> (DDoS) and seen by the Guardian, indicate that Johnson was offered a personal stake in Bia Advisory.<\/p>\n

The company was to be incorporated in the secretive jurisdiction of Guernsey. Documents suggest Johnson would receive 24% of the shares, with a further 20% for his aide Williams-Walker.<\/p>\n

Boris Johnson and Shelley Williams-Walker in 2019, when he was PM and she was his head of operations. Photograph: Alice Mitchell\/Alamy<\/p>\n

The remaining shares were to be split between two founders. One, Shem Baldeosingh, is a public affairs consultant who has most recently championed the vaping industry. The other, David Roach, is a PR man with political ambitions. He stood unsuccessfully for the Conservatives in the 2015 election, then ran the leave campaign\u2019s central London operation in the Brexit referendum, according to his website. It was Roach who approached Johnson about the venture, according to an official filing by the ex-PM.<\/p>\n

Although an Austrian banker was recruited, the firm had little by way of a track record in handling enormous sums of money. Yet, armed with Johnson, Bia\u2019s pitch was audacious: to ask Abu Dhabi not only to let it manage \u20ac1bn (just over $1bn at the time), the documents suggest, but also for a grant of another \u20ac10m to cover initial costs.<\/p>\n

This would indicate that the founders were putting in little if any of their own money while predicting 2.5% returns \u2013 potentially making them millions. But first they had to convince the Emiratis.<\/p>\n

As prime minister, Johnson had hosted Khaldoon al-Mubarak at least three times at No 10. Best known in the UK as the chair of Manchester City, Mubarak attended an exclusive dinner for superstar financiers and industrialists during Johnson\u2019s post-Brexit Global Investment Summit in 2021. And he was part of a delegation that accompanied Abu Dhabi\u2019s authoritarian ruler, with whom Johnson inspected a guard of honour on the parade ground behind Downing Street.<\/p>\n

Come 2024, it was time for Abu Dhabi to welcome Johnson. A state energy company part-owned by Mubadala paid him $350,000 for a speech at its green conference, the leaked files suggest. In advance, the head of the national oil company, who as chair of the 2023 climate summit in the UAE faced allegations of greenwashing<\/a>, requested that the gifted orator praise his environmental leadership. Johnson appears to have obliged.<\/p>\n

After the speech, the ex-PM was driven to Mubadala Tower, one of the glittering skyscrapers the emirs have raised above the desert. During a meeting with Mubarak he raised the Bia Advisory climate finance venture, the leaked files suggest. A draft of a letter prepared two months later for him to send Mubarak reads: \u201cAs I briefly alluded to when we met, I am now acting as principal adviser to Bia Advisory.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Khaldoon al-Mubarak is best known in the UK as the chair of Manchester City. Photograph: Andrew Yates\/AP<\/p>\n

Johnson appears to have lobbied a contact from his time in high office, contravening ethics rules designed to stop ex-ministers exploiting their public service. And the leaked files show the watchdog had not yet cleared him for the job. In fact, back in London, officials were raising concerns about Johnson\u2019s dealings with foreign governments.<\/p>\n

\u2018Mystified by the delay\u2019<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s draft letter to Mubarak said: \u201cAs you know, a key part of my legacy as prime minister of the United Kingdom was coalescing world leaders around a series of concrete commitments at the Cop26 climate summit in 2021.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he made clear this was about business. He \u201cwould very much welcome the opportunity to engage with your team about what we hope might prove a [tempting] investment opportunity for Mubadala\u201d.<\/p>\n

The letter, however, was on hold. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), the watchdog that vets ex-ministers\u2019 money-making, had still not approved his Bia Advisory role. Johnson\u2019s team was growing frustrated with the delay, the leaked files suggest.<\/p>\n

Acoba told his office that because Johnson \u201cproposes to contact foreign governments\u201d the case had been referred to the foreign secretary\u2019s team. This was David Cameron, Johnson\u2019s old rival and a predecessor as prime minister, who had endured his own lobbying scandal in the Greensill affair<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In June 2024, with the letter to Mubarak still not sent, Williams-Walker, the Johnson aide who stood to take a stake in the venture, emailed the Acoba official handling the case to say Johnson had taken it up personally with Eric Pickles, the then head of the watchdog. \u201cWe are slightly mystified by the delay,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, William-Walker told Bia\u2019s founders, she had rewritten the letter \u201cto make it more authentically Boris-y\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce Acoba responds,\u201d Bia Advisory\u2019s Baldeosingh told Johnson\u2019s aides, he hoped the former prime minister would send the letter to the Mubadala boss, <\/strong>\u201cperhaps followed up with a personal message, to secure his patronage\u201d.<\/p>\n

None of those involved in the Bia Advisory venture nor Mubadala representatives responded to requests for comment. Neither did Williams-Walker.<\/p>\n

The fate of the venture is not shown in the leaked files. Regardless of how it ended, the Guardian asked Johnson how much money he had made from his role. He did not answer.<\/p>\n

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