MI5 has repeatedly refused to investigate evidence that an alleged Russian spy was trying to cultivate influence among senior Conservative politicians and funnel illegal Russian funds to the party, a Tory member has claimed in a new complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT).
Serhiy Christo, a Conservative Party activist and former BBC World Service journalist, has appealed to the investigative powers tribunal, bringing the case after he corresponded with the chairman of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, Conservative MP Julian Lewis , who recommended he take the information to the authorities.
The committee’s Russia 2020 report claimed that the security services had turned a blind eye to “credible evidence” of Russian interference, and Christo’s claims offer potentially explosive new evidence that backs up its findings. Labor MP Ben Bradshaw said “allegations that the security services ignored evidence from a Conservative Party whistleblower exposing Russian infiltration of the highest levels of the party are truly shocking” and argued that “the Conservative Party’s problem with Russia’ is a constant threat to Britain’s national security.
Christo says that reading the Russia report made him “suddenly realize that maybe the story I have is more significant than I thought,” and at Lewis’s suggestion, he wrote to Cressida Dick, then the police commissioner of Met.
He received a reply from Counter-Terrorism Command (SO15) who said it was not a Met matter and advised him to take it to the IPT – which oversees the security services – which he has already done.
The allegations center around the formation of a group called Conservative Friends of Russia in 2012 and its association with Russian diplomat Sergei Nalobin.
In August that year, Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenko threw a lavish launch party for the group in the gardens of his Kensington residence, with guests including former culture, media and sport secretary John Whittingdale and Boris Johnson’s current minister wife Carrie Symonds. The Russian government also funded an all-expenses-paid trip to Moscow for a hand-picked group of members, including the future chief executive of Vote Leave, Matthew Elliott.
Christo says his suspicions about Nalobin, who is a political first secretary at the embassy, were awakened two years earlier when he was approached by the diplomat and they met at the Carlton Club. When Nalobin learned that Christo was volunteering at Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) Treasurer’s Unit, he said he could “introduce Russian companies that would donate money to the Conservative Party”.
Russian diplomat Sergey Nalobin meeting with Boris Johnson. Photo: Twitter
“I immediately realized that what he was proposing was illegal under UK law,” Christo wrote in a letter to Lewis last year.
Alarmed by Nalobin’s efforts and the band’s embassy sponsorship, Christo contacts the Guardian’s Luke Harding and reveals Nalobin’s past and his troubling relationship with the group. Harding and journalists from Russia’s The Insider discovered that Nalobin had family ties to the FSB spy agency: his father Nikolai was a KGB general whose responsibilities included overseeing Alexander Litvinenko, while his brother Viktor also worked for the FSB.
The resulting articles led to the resignation of the honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Russia, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, and the renaming of the group.
What Christo has never revealed before is his failed attempts to get the security services to act. He says he only reported to the Guardian after his attempts to get the authorities to act failed. In 2011 he repeatedly tried to raise the alarm with MI5. After an initial meeting with a junior agent came to nothing, he wrote to the director-general of MI5, which led to another meeting with two agents in a government building in Whitehall.
Christo offered to meet with Nalobin again and question him, wearing a hidden camera, about how the Russian government intended to make the donations. This proposal was also rejected and he was advised to cease contact with Nalobin.
He also raised his concerns with senior party members after a discussion with Britain’s most notorious Russian defector, Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB colonel. Gordievsky studies Nalobin’s biography and tells Christo that he thinks he is a spy.
The Conservative Friends of Russia was relaunched as the Westminster Russian Forum and finally closed completely last year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Nalobin continued to maintain close relations with Conservative Party MPs and activists for another three years, until the Foreign Office refused to renew his visa.
In 2017, the Observer published an article mentioning Nalobin’s interest in the rivalry between David Cameron and Boris Johnson and his forced departure from the UK. This led to a series of furious emails from the Russian ambassador, who tried to “correct” the article. Observer refused to do so. Last year, Nalobin surfaced in Estonia when news broke that he had been expelled for espionage and was “directly and actively involved in undermining Estonia’s security”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused of having more intelligence agents in London than at the height of the Cold War.
“I think it’s important because none of this should have happened,” Christo said last week. “Had MI5 acted, Russia’s Conservative Friends would never have been launched and Nalobin would not have been allowed to get close to so many key Conservative politicians and party members.”
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