The Times article in full. Knocks Partygate out of the park.
Boris Johnson’s Russian crony Evgeny Lebedev got peerage after spies dropped warning
Gabriel Pogrund, Harry Yorke
Saturday March 05 2022, 10.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times
The security services withdrew an assessment that granting a peerage to a Russian businessman posed a national security risk after Boris Johnson intervened.
The prime minister pushed ahead with the nomination of his friend Evgeny Lebedev, the Moscow-born son of an ex-KGB agent and media mogul, even after intelligence officials raised concerns.
Johnson is said to have responded to advice to drop it by claiming: “This is anti-Russianism.” In March 2020, the House of Lords Appointments Commission (Holac), which vets peerages, wrote to the prime minister advising him against granting Lebedev, 41, a lifetime seat in the Lords.
Lebedev, who owns the Evening Standard and Independent newspapers, derives his wealth from his father Alexander, 62, a billionaire oligarch. Previously described as a Putin critic, he is thought to retain close ties to the Kremlin and is understood to be in Moscow.
Holac’s objections were based on intelligence provided by MI5 and MI6, relayed to the commission by Cabinet Office security officials. A source with direct knowledge of events said: “Their initial advice was that they considered that there could be a threat to national security ... There was some security concern about the whole situation.”
Johnson, 57, met Lebedev, who has British citizenship, at his home on March 19, 2020, two days after the initial rejection. No 10 will not say what they discussed.
The prime minister returned to Downing Street and took a personal interest in the case. A former adviser said he refused to accept the verdict of the security services and would not drop the issue.
One source said Johnson’s political aides had helped to unblock sensitive peerages to which Holac had objected at around the same time — such as Lord Cruddas of Shoreditch, the former Conservative Party co-treasurer — as they were deemed to be of wider importance to the party.
While they were “pretty disinterested” by Lebedev’s case, Johnson was insistent his peerage “go through”. By June, Holac received an update about Lebedev. Cabinet Office officials advised that the security services no longer deemed his peerage to be problematic. The source said: “The security services withdrew that particular quite damning bit of advice.”
Asked whether the intelligence itself seemed to have changed, they said: “Yes it did. It did. What the intelligence would say was, that with the extra information it got, they felt it wasn’t as big a threat as they had initially thought.”
The commission no longer had any basis on which to advise Johnson against Lebedev’s peerage. The source said: “Faced with that, the committee had no option really [but] to cave in and to agree with it. But there was always concern there.” It approved the peerage.
A source said the strongly held suspicion was that Johnson had asked the security services whether “perhaps their advice could be watered down”.
A second source, a former Downing Street aide, confirmed there had been a change in the security assessment, but they, like other senior officials at the time, did not know the exact circumstances leading up to it. A third source, who also worked in No 10, said they believed a “secret deal” had been done with security officials at the prime minister’s behest.
A former government figure who has dealt extensively with the intelligence agencies said they would not have changed their assessment unless new evidence had been presented to them.
Lebedev, whose father bought the Evening Standard for £1, retains the seat and title for life
Lord Clark of Windermere, the former chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who sits on Holac, said: “The committee takes every case seriously and investigates it as thoroughly as we can. But we do rely on information from many sources to guide us in our recommendations.” He added: “At the end of the day it’s a matter for the prime minister.”
In July 2020, Downing Street announced the Queen had formally accepted Johnson’s nomination of Lebedev for a peerage. The following December, he was introduced to the chamber as Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia. He is said to have originally opted for the title Lord Lebedev of Moscow but was told there was “no way” that could happen.
He retains the seat and title for life, although since being ennobled he has failed to contribute to a single debate or vote.
Clark was one of several Holac members who were approached but declined to comment on Lebedev’s case. MI5 also declined to comment, saying it was a matter for the Cabinet Office.
Lebedev was presented with a series of allegations, including a description of the events leading up to his peerage. He said “all” of them were incorrect, and the questions did not “merit an answer”. In response, he was specifically asked whether he had discussed the peerage with Johnson at their March meeting. He did not respond. His father did not respond to questions about his ties to the Russian state.
The disclosures shed fresh light on the Lebedevs’ successful penetration of the British establishment.
Johnson’s own ties to the family stem from his time as London mayor. In 2009, the year after he was elected, Alexander Lebedev bought the Evening Standard, a daily newspaper distributed across London, for £1.
He said he had first read the newspaper during his time as a KGB agent stationed in London. It had been a “very good” product with some “brilliant journalists”, he said, and he had no wish to interfere in the editorial output or running of the newspaper.
Instead, that would be supervised by his son. Born in Moscow but educated at a Church of England primary school during his father’s posting, Evgeny, then 28, had become a prominent fixture on the capital’s party scene. Having taken part in secret negotiations to buy the Standard, he was keen to establish himself as a serious businessman and philanthropist.
He proved himself an industrious and effective networker. A few months after the family’s purchase of the newspaper, he helped to persuade an array of socialites, celebrities and politicians to attend a cocktail party and fundraising event for a charity founded by Raisa Gorbacheva, the wife of the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. He was among the guests at Stud House, Lebedev’s 18th century house near Hampton Court Palace in west London, alongside the Harry Potter author JK Rowling and Johnson.
Johnson wrote to Lebedev’s father in April 2009, wishing him “all the best” before the mayoral election in Sochi, where he stood as a candidate before being disqualified.
The following year, Lebedev oversaw the last-minute purchase of the Independent newspaper. Shortly afterwards, Johnson wrote to him thanking him for an “excellent lunch” and saying he would be “thrilled” if either of his newspapers could dedicate some publicity to his social action initiatives.
It was the start of a close alliance. Johnson symbolised the liberal and cosmopolitan conservatism which David Cameron was seeking to project on the national stage. Lebedev, who, despite his youth, quickly became a dominant force within the paper, tried to reflect that same spirit on the pages of the Standard. The paper threw its weight behind him despite Labour’s domination in the capital. In May 2012, it told voters to back the “right choice for London” in an unusual front-page editorial praising Johnson’s achievements before his narrow re-election as mayor.
As Johnson set his sights on national politics the pair became closer. In October 2015, Johnson was invited to Castello di Santa Eurasia, the Lebedev family’s castle in Perugia in Umbria, central Italy.
He is thought to have travelled to the castle at least six times, sometimes in Lebedev’s private jet. Even after being appointed foreign secretary in 2016, he continued to go, making at least one secret trip. He did so without his Metropolitan Police protection officers, tasked with giving him 24/7 protection. It means Johnson, as Britain’s top diplomat, spent time in the home of Russian oligarch without any security or officials present.
Johnson has never disclosed why he attended or who else was there. He was forced to confront the issue only after newspapers revealed details of his visit. One said he was spotted in an Italian airport en route home looking “dishevelled”, “barely able to walk” and “holding a war strategy manual”.
The night after his 2019 general election victory, Johnson and his then girlfriend, Carrie, chose to attend just one party until the early hours: Lebedev’s Christmas bash, which also marked his father’s 60th birthday.
In the months that followed, Johnson set about appointing friends and allies to the House of Lords. One of them was Lebedev.
The pandemic, and the objections of Holac, complicated the nomination process but Johnson continued to support Lebedev.
Two former Downing Street sources say he was particularly anxious to ensure the Evening Standard — by then a struggling free sheet, its circulation crashing because of the collapse in commuting — received a healthy share of the government’s Covid-19 advertising budget during the first wave of the pandemic.
He is said to have personally asked Alex Aitken, executive director for government communication, to ensure the Standard benefited from the agreements.
While dozens of other newspapers, including national titles, benefited from the advertising deals, a source said that he had only mentioned Lebedev specifically. A source said there was a particular push to ensure the Standard was treated as a regional title so that it would receive “wraparound” advertising — an advert on the front and back pages of a newspaper.
The claim of preferential treatment is disputed by others who say he was keen to ensure the survival of all newspapers. “He was even concerned about The Guardian,” quipped one ally. Another said Michael Gove, a former Times journalist, was more closely involved in advertising discussions and was similarly non-partisan in his approach.
Last week Lebedev used the front page of the Standard to urge Putin to halt his invasion of Ukraine, personally addressing the leader and telling him to “please, stop this war”. He has previously described Russia’s leader as “strong” and called for an end to previous sanctions against the country, but friends say he was moved to intervene while travelling in Africa after significant pressure from friends in politics and the media. His father has remained silent.
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.”
On the Covid-19 advertising, the spokesman added: “No title received preferred treatment and all outlets were selected by our external media planning and buying agency purely on their ability to engage with audiences at a national, regional and local level.”