Posts Tagged ‘richard royal’
Tory blushes deepen over activities of Conservative Friends of Russia
It seemed like the perfect fact-finding mission. Ten days in Moscow and St Petersburg, trips to the state ballet (Figaro and Don Quixote), and meetings with top Russian politicians. There was a visit to the world-famous Hermitage Museum. Not to mention gala dinners and an afternoon sightseeing at the Kremlin.
At least four activists from the Conservative Friends of Russia group took part in the trip in September. A photo shows the Tories posing on a red carpet inside the Duma, Russia’s state parliament. The official itinerary describes them, flatteringly, as “young political leaders from Great Britain”. Best of all, a Russian federal cultural agency, Rossotrudnichestvo, picked up the bill for travel, hotel and tickets.
Three months later, the group is in disarray, amid questions about its behind-the-scenes links to the Russian embassy in London and its alleged uncritical cheerleading for Vladimir Putin. Last week, its honorary president, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, resigned. Rifkind said he had been unhappy for some time about the group’s behaviour and “political direction”.
The “final straw” came when Conservative Friends of Russia launched a scurrilous attack on the Labour MP Chris Bryant, and posted a photo of Bryant in his Y-fronts, Rifkind said. More resignations followed. Since the weekend, two more Tory MPs have quit, Robert Buckland and deputy speaker Nigel Evans.
Most humiliating of all, Prince Michael of Kent – a Russian-speaker who looks uncannily like Russia’s last tsar – pulled out of the group’s “old” new year dinner at the SamarQuand restaurant.
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How Kremlin got diplomats to woo Tories
The Kremlin instructed its diplomats in London to deepen their “co-operation” with the Conservative party in an apparent attempt to mute criticism of Russia’s human rights record and to rebuild ties following the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
Emails seen by the Guardian show the Russian embassy has played a key behind-the-scenes role in the gaffe-prone Conservative Friends of Russia. The group, which held its launch party in the garden of the Russian ambassador in August, is on the brink of collapse after the resignation last week of Sir Malcolm Rifkind, its honorary president. Two other Tory MPs, Nigel Evans and Robert Buckland, also quit after the group published a photo of a Labour MP, Chris Bryant, in his underpants. On Thursday, Prince Michael of Kent pulled out of its new year dinner. Hours later its website went offline.
The Guardian has also learned that the group’s diplomatic contact inside the Russian embassy, Sergey Nalobin, has family ties to Russia’s intelligence agencies. His father, Nikolai Nalobin, is a former KGB general. Nalobin Sr worked in a top role with the FSB, the successor to the KGB, which the government believes was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko’s widow Marina said General Nalobin was her husband’s boss in the 1990s when Litvinenko was an FSB agent.
Sergey Nalobin’s brother also worked for the FSB, according to the Russian press. Vladimir Putin, a former KGB spy, was head of the FSB before becoming Russian president in 2000.
Sources suggest it was Sergey Nalobin who invited Richard Royal, the chairman of Conservative Friends of Russia, and other members, to visit Moscow and St Petersburg in September on a 10-day trip paid for by the Russian government. The diplomat also set up meetings there with politicians from Putin’s United Russia and other Kremlin-approved parties. Nalobin also arranged the launch event in the ambassador’s Kensington garden and is pictured under the organisation’s banner.
Russian diplomats were “instructed by Moscow” to explore how the Conservatives and United Russia could co-operate in the Council of Europe. The two parties belong to the same faction in the council’s parliamentary assembly, with Tory members frequently voting with their Russian colleagues against motions condemning Moscow.
Sergei Cristo, a Russian-born Tory activist and fundraiser, said Nalobin approached him in December 2010, seeking introductions to top Conservative party figures. According to Cristo, Nalobin also offered to make donations to Conservative party funds via UK-registered, Russian-owned companies. No companies were named, however, and the offer never materialised.
In an April 2011 email, Nalobin wrote to Cristo: “We’ve received instructions from Moscow – to discuss the perspective of co-operation between British Conservatives and United Russia in the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe. With whom would it be best to discuss this question?”
Nalobin also inquired if there were young Tories who might be interested in travelling to Moscow to attend a Kremlin-sponsored youth forum. He was subsequently in contact with Royal, the group’s chairman, and with other activists who went on to form Conservative Friends of Russia. Royal and Nalobin met days before the group’s Moscow trip. Asked if he was aware of Nalobin’s ties to Russian intelligence, Royal declined to comment.
Russia has multiple reasons for seeking to influence the Conservatives. The increasingly Eurosceptic Tory party has shunned its traditional centre-right allies in Europe in favour of a pact with Putin’s party. The two are pillars of the European Democrat Group (EDG), which can only function if they cooperate. Russia has forged ad hoc alliances with the Tories and others to see off motions it regards as hostile – over its 2008 war with Georgia, for example. Moscow’s priority is to prevent the UK and other EU countries from introducing the Magnistky Act, named after the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was beaten to death in prison in Russia in 2009.
The act was approved last week by the US House of Representatives. It envisages banning 60 senior Russian officials implicated in the alleged theft of $230m (£143m) in taxes paid by Hermitage Capital, an investment fund.
The government opposes a similar act in the UK, despite widespread cross-party support. If implented it would prevent Russian officials accused of serious abuses from visiting London, a favourite destination for Kremlin bureaucrats and affluent Russians.
Surrey police are still investigating the mysterious death of Alexander Perepilichnyy, a Russian businessman, who collapsed and died on 10 November outside his mansion in Weybridge, Surrey. He had supplied bank documents to Swiss investigators probing money allegedly stolen in the Magnitsky scam.
The Nalobin email
From: Sergey Nalobin
To: Sergei Cristo
Subject: PR
Date: 25 April 2011
Dear Sergei, Thanks for the link. Will think about this. Two points:
1. We’ve received instructions from Moscow – to discuss the perspective of co-operation between British Conservatives and United Russia in the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe. With whom would it be best to discuss this question?
2. http://youthforum.ru/ Have a look, please, perhaps this is of interest to young Tory leaders?
Best wishes,
Sergei Nalobin быстрые займы онлайн займы на карту срочно https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php срочный займ на карту онлайн
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Friends of Russia or Friends of Putin?
The recently-established lobby group Conservative Friends of Russia (CFOR) is doing little to dispel suspicions that its sympathies lie with the Russian government.
Last week it published an article on its website accusing the Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Russia, Chris Bryant, of “incompetence” over his failure to hold an annual general meeting at the required time. To accompany the piece, which has now been taken off their site, CFOR selected the snapshot of Mr Bryant in his underwear, originally posted on a gay dating site, which circulated in the tabloids years ago. The relevance of that particular photo to his stewardship of the APPG was not explained.
This most recent episode of sophomoric hackery has induced Honorary Chairman Sir Malcolm Rifkind to resign his post, and Robert Buckland to step down as Honorary Vice President. According to the Telegraph, “A spokesman for Sir Malcolm said he was ‘very unhappy’ about the article and it was the ‘final straw’, adding to long-held concerns about the way the group was being run.”
Bryant has responded by accusing CFOR of engaging in crude, Kremlin-esque tactics to discredit him and force his resignation as the Chairman of the Russia APPG, and suggested that the group is acting at the behest of the Russian embassy: “I gather the Conservative Friends of Russia have covered themselves in homophobic glory,” and “clearly [they] would prefer a Putin patsy to run the all-party group on Russia. Did the Embassy pay for them?” CFOR chairman Richard Royal responded by accusing Bryant of using alleged homophobia as a “smokescreen [to] divert attention from the real issue”.
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Moscow-on-Thames
When most people think of British-Russian relations, they imagine Bond films, iron curtains, Cambridge double agents, irradiated dissidents, and billionaire oligarchs who dress like Evelyn Waugh but behave like Tony Soprano and then sue each other in London courts. But there’s another element underwriting this not-so-special relationship.
British elites, elected or otherwise, have grown highly susceptible to the unscrutinized rubles that continue to pour into the boom-or-boom London real estate market and a luxury-service industry catering to wealthy Russians who are as bodyguarded as they are jet-set. This phenomenon has not only imported some of the worst practices of a mafia state across the English Channel, but it has had a deleterious impact on Britain’s domestic politics. And some of the most powerful and well-connected figures of British public life, from the Rothschilds to former prime ministers, have been taken in by it. Most surprising, though, is how the heirs to Margaret Thatcher’s fierce opposition to the Soviets have often been the ones most easily seduced by the Kremlin’s entreaties.
On Aug. 21, a new lobby group called Conservative Friends of Russia (CFoR) was launched at the London home of Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador to Britain. The launch was attended by some 250 guests, including parliamentarians, Conservative Party members, businessmen, lobbyists, NGO representatives, and even princes. Yakovenko and Member of Parliament John Whittingdale, who chairs the Culture Select Committee in Parliament and is an “honorary vice president” of CFoR, both delivered keynote addresses. The lavish do in the backyard of the Kremlin envoy featured, as the Guardian reported, a “barbecue, drinks and a raffle, with prizes of vodka, champagne and a biography of Vladimir Putin,” and it came just days after the Pussy Riot verdict. It was an open invitation to controversy. If CFoR wanted to portray itself as merely a promoter of “dialogue” between Britain and Russia, it was an odd beginning for a group born looking and sounding a lot like “Tories for Putin.”
CFoR was founded by Richard Royal, a public affairs manager at Ladbrokes, a popular chain of betting parlors in Britain. He also owns his own company, Lionheart Public Affairs, which has no website but shares a registered address with the new pro-Russia lobby group. Responding to the storm of criticism his new project has provoked, Royal took to the Guardian’s website to defend the initiative against what he called “armchair critics on Twitter,” in language you’d expect from a PR professional. “Whether we like it or not,” Royal wrote, “Russia is an influential and essential part of the international community and its importance will only grow over time. We need to stop making decisions based on misconceptions that are decades old, and deal with reality.”
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