Boris Johnson admitted for the first time that he met former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev at an Italian palace without officials present in April 2018, when he was foreign secretary.
The prime minister told MPs he had “certainly met” Lebedev, also a former owner of the Independent, and admitted the meeting had taken place in private, before pausing to say the meeting took place “in Italy, as it happens”. .
Indeed, Johnson had made a trip to a restored castle in Perugia owned by Yevgeny Lebedev, Alexander’s son, in April 2018 for a long weekend party, immediately after attending a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels to discuss the security situation with Russia.
Johnson was answering questions from Labour’s Meg Hillier at the House of Commons liaison committee on Wednesday. When asked if he had reported the party meeting to Foreign Office officials, he added: “I think I mentioned it, yes.”
A recording of the trip was initially revealed by Johnson to the Register of Members’ Interests, which recorded that he had an “overnight stay” with Yevgeny Lebedev on Saturday, April 28, traveling “accompanied by a spouse, family member or friend”.
Johnson initially repeatedly refused to explain the nature of the trip in response to questions from the Guardian and whether he had taken his official security team with him. The revelation does not mention any meeting with Alexander.
Shortly after, a photo emerged of Johnson at a nearby airport in Italy the following Sunday. Other passengers at the airport said the then foreign secretary looked as if he had “slept in his clothes”, struggling to walk in a straight line and telling other passengers he had had a rough night.
A few months later, the Observer revealed that Johnson had met Alexander Lebedev during the party trip – a meeting confirmed not by a politician but by a spokesman for the media owner.
“He goes there [Italy] to often stay with his son. He is in Europe a lot and has met almost all of Evgeni’s friends here over the years. So there is nothing particularly unusual about the meeting,” Lebedev’s spokesman said at the time.
During the late Cold War, Alexander Lebedev was sent as a spy to London in 1988. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he was involved in business, including the media, and never tried to hide his KGB past. In his memoirs “Hunt the Banker”, Lebedev briefly tells about his career in espionage, which ended in 1992 with the rank of colonel.
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Last month, Alexander Lebedev was placed under economic sanctions by Canada for “directly aiding” Russia’s war in Ukraine, prompting him to resign as a director of a company linked to the Independent. It has not been sanctioned by the UK or any other major country.
Johnson’s relationship with Evgeni has also come under scrutiny. The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee is investigating Johnson’s appointment of Yevgeny to the premiership despite initial concerns raised by MI5 about his father’s previous work in the KGB.
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