Surprise suprise, Russia is in the news again. @GeorgeGreenwood and I have been pretty busy over the last couple of months reporting on a company with Russian links few people had heard of before: Aquind. Here’s what we’ve found - #thread (1/15)
Aquind is an energy company which is behind almost £245,000 in donations to the Tory party. When we started researching on it, in February, we didn’t know our investigation would result in more than 15 stories (2/15)
It all started last December with a piece by the brilliant @estwebber who revealed Tory MP David Morris had asked the Government to lobby in Aquind’s favour after receiving a £10,000 donation by the company thetimes.co.uk/article/david-… (3/15)
We found that Aquind, which is trying to build a £1.2bn energy project between France and England that could supply energy to up to 20 per cent of England’s homes, has multiple connections to the Tory party @emilygosden thetimes.co.uk/article/power-… (4/15)
But the company's ownership was unknown. Earlier this year, Aquind’s owner successfully applied for his identity to be obscured from Companies House. We learned through overseas business filings that this person is a former Russian energy executive thetimes.co.uk/article/myster… (5/15)
With @TimesONeill @LOS_Fisher we revealed Aquind and Lubov Chernukhin had donated to half of Tory members on the intelligence watchdog committee, which published the #Russiareport on Russian interference in the UK, as well as 14 ministers (6/15) thetimes.co.uk/article/conser…
We also revealed Aquind director Alexander Temerko and Lubov Chernukhin were both directors of the same energy firm, SLP Engineering, for a brief period in 2007. The company’s renewable arm, SLP Renewable Energy, became Aquind in 2010 (7/15)
Following our investigation, top Tory MPs asked for Aquind’s mysterious owner to be named thetimes.co.uk/article/name-r… (8/15)
Our analysis of Companies House records show Aquind’s owner is one of only a handful of people to have received such an exemption - only 150 of about 4 million UK businesses thetimes.co.uk/article/compan… (9/15)
Last month we finally revealed Aquind’s mysterious owner is Viktor Fedotov, a former vice-president of Russian oil giant Lukoil, who owns a £7m mansion in England but resides in Monaco thetimes.co.uk/article/reveal… (10/15)
But the story didn’t end there. A few days later we reported Lord Callanan, a junior business minister and former Aquind director, was given a role promoting transparency and anti-corruption in the coal, oil and gas sector thetimes.co.uk/article/anti-c… (11/15)
...and after a 3-month FOI battle we also learned energy minister Clare Perry was warned against falling into the “elephant trap” of discussing the future of Aquind’s £1.2bn interconnector project with Temerko thetimes.co.uk/article/energy… (12/15)
Labour’s deputy leader @AngelaRayner asked the Tory party if they knew who Aquind’s owner was when they accepted the company’s donation and what due diligence they had done on the company. To this date, the questions remain unanswered. thetimes.co.uk/article/tories… (13/15)
And now? Aquind is still donating money to the Tory party (and the party is still accepting the donations). Tory MP Andrew Percy lobbied the EU in support of Aquind’s project after receiving £10,000 in donations @Direthoughts thetimes.co.uk/article/tory-m… (14/15)
The government will decide later this year if Aquind’s £1.2bn cable will get the go ahead, while Boris Johnson has been threatened with legal action over a rival energy project. But there's still a lot we don't know... thetimes.co.uk/article/eurotu… (15/15)
Bonus track: kudos to @CatherineBelton for reporting on Temerko's relationship with Boris Johnson last year reuters.com/investigates/s… and @mikeysmith for revealing Alok Sharma had to recuse himself after dinner with Temerko at a Tory fundraiser this year mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…
