Thread by @rickycoxon

1/ "Boris did/not go to Perugia in Italy" - why does this matter? A thread.

Background first. On the 17th Sept, officials at Perugia airport said Johnson was there "in the last few days". Later they confirmed he "landed on the 11th at 2pm and left on the 14th at 7:45am".

2/ Downing Street denies he went at all. So the first issue is that either the officials at Perugia airport are lying or Johnson's staff at Downing street are.

This isn't the first and only time Johnson has lied so I'm calling dibs on it being him.

3/ The evidence is pretty obvious. The Flightradar site shows a couple of private jets flying in and out of Perugia's airport at approximately the times above - one even landed at an RAF base in Johnson's home constituency.

4/ Why Perugia? And why lie about it? Well apart from making the lie the dead cat story, it is pretty worrying that Johnson has gone there.

Perugia is the home of Johnson's longtime friend Evgeny Lebedev. He's been there before on a number of occasions.

5/ One time in 2018, whilst foreign secretary and just after the Salisbury poisonings, he went to Perugia without any security and was seen at the airport looking disheveled and worse for wear.

6/ Lebedev also threw a huge party for Johnson after he won the 2019 general election in December.

Aww, that's nice. Friends.

7/ But the real question is: in the midst of the 2nd wave of Covid-19 AND during the most crucial period in EU trade deal negotiations AND during the largest recession in modern history, did Prime Minister Johnson toddle off on a jolly?

8/ Evgeny Lebedev is the son of Alexander Lebedev. Alexander was a KGB spy for Russia based in London. During the collapse of the USSR, Alexander became an oligarch worth an estimated $3b.

Not bad considering his parents were teachers in communist Russia.

9/ Like most of the Russian oligarchs, at the end of the USSR, Alexander was given a ton of state assets that moved from public ownership to private hands making him very rich indeed.

10/ Many people, including myself, have warned that Brexit will create a handful of extremely rich oligarchs at the cost of the ordinary UK citizen.

But that might just be a complete coincidence.

11/ The Putin-supporting Lebedev's own two British newspapers, the Evening Standard and the Independent, as well as a Russian newspaper.

12/ If I were an oligarch that gained my wealth by illicit means, I would buy a newspaper in a foreign tax haven and use it to control the narrative and spread misinformation that enabled me to continue my life of total lawlessness & spoilt privilege.

But that's me.

13/ In Fact, in spring 2019, MI6 and special branch had Evgeny Lebedev down as a "potential security risk".

But by June 2019 this was down-graded by order of the Cabinet Office and Lebedev was then given an honours in the Queens new years honours list.

14/ Gove and Cummings run the Cabinet office by the way.

Their financial backer and founder of LeaveEU is multi-millionaire Aaron Banks. He's married to the daughter of another former Russian spy and Putin oligarch. I shit you not, look it up.

15/ When Cummings broke the lockdown rules people asked "what does he have on Johnson?".

A former senior MI6 officer has speculated that "someone may have a Kompromat on the Prime Minister".

16/ Some of the foreign press are reporting that Johnson and Carrie have split up and the wedding canceled due to him having an affair with a 29yr old violinist from...you guessed it... Russia.

17/ Sidenote: When you leave your wife for your mistress you create a vacancy.

Who said the Tories didn't create jobs?

18/ Anyway, over the weekend, some files called #FINCEN were leaked. They contain over 200,000 suspicious financial transactions worth over $2trillion that were facilitated by banks around the world, including UK bank HSBC. Both the US and UK Gov't appears to have ignored them.

19/ One of these dodgy transactions was for $8m and involved another Russian oligarch called Vladimir Chernukhin. He's a close ally of Putin and a general bad guy. He's been accused by US officials as "playing a key role in advancing Russia's malign activities".

20/ Vladimir's wife, Lubov Chernukhin, has donated £1.7m to the Tory party just before the Brexit vote. She's paid £160,000 to Boris Johnson for a game of tennis too. The Chernukhin's live in London.

Is anyone spotting a pattern yet?

21/ Very powerful, wealthy, and loyal Russian oligarchs have set-up base in London. They own and use the British press and the UK's generous tax avoidance network, including British banks, along with the inner sanctum of the Tory party to influence UK politics to their advantage.

22/ And then earlier this year we finally got to hear about the Russian interference report. It said UK authorities were deliberately looking the other way when it came to foreign interference in our elections and democracy.

It's starting to make sense now.

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