NEW: Ukraine sanctioned Alexander Lebedev as part of a wave of sanctions against individuals supportive of Russia’s war, placing greater scrutiny on the oligarch’s links to the UK government.

tortoisemedia.com/2023/06/01/eve… The designation suggests that Lebedev is a “person directly or indirectly controlled by residents of a foreign state or acting in their interests”.

New call data, private investigator payments, and affidavits are behind Prince Harry's legal claims against the Daily Mail, The Sun, and The Mirror's publishers.

@KatieGunning2 and I dug through his court filings and spoke to key figures in the cases...

pod.fo/e/1651d7 –Itemised call data suggests phone hacking was more widespread than we knew.

For example, there were 315 alleged attempts at accessing Princes Harry’s private secretary’s voicemails between 2004 and 2006.

I've documented 5 sexual assault allegations against Crispin Odey, one of Britain's richest men & a Conservatives & Brexit donor.

The 5 women don't know each other. Their allegations span 24 years. Odey says they contain “falsehoods” and “inaccuracies”.
pod.fo/e/154771 Yet the overlap is striking: lunging, groping, forced tongue. The most recent allegation differs: he forced a woman's hand onto his hard penis before she freed herself from his clutches.

And it's from late 2021 - just months after he was acquitted for assaulting a woman in 1998.

Exc: leak of documents seen by @tortoise reveals Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev's businesses in Crimea breached EU sanctions for years.

Evgeny, Lord Lebedev was personally in breach while an EU citizen and before ownership transferred back to his father.

torto.se/3RGNZi9 Evgeny was, in 2016, the ultimate beneficial owner of Herschel Consultants (Overseas) Limited.

This shell company was registered in Cyprus, an offshore haven in the EU that is popular with Russian oligarchs.

It owned another company in Crimea called Almond Grove CJSC.

Among the emails @JulietteGarside and I found was one apparently from Naomi Campbell, asking Saif Gaddafi to assist her "great friend" who wanted to visit Libya for "Pleasure" – Ghislaine Maxwell.

“Love and Light”, the supermodel signed off, “hugs hugs”.
theguardian.com/world/2022/jul… Other appearances:

Karol Sikora, a UK oncology professor, who Libya paid to assess Lockerbie bomber Al-Megrahi.

Sikora said "the best way" to get Al-Megrahi home was for "two physicians to meet with him and a third expert to agree with their findings.” Third expert: Sikora.

NEW: A national security risk unseen since the Profumo Affair.

Who accompanied Boris Johnson to a former KGB agent's villa in Italy after the Skripal poisonings?

Why didn't the then Foreign Secretary say he met Alexander Lebedev?

w/ @claudiabromley.

tortoisemedia.com/audio/londongr… Lord Ricketts, the UK's first National Security Advisor and a former Joint Intelligence Committee chair,
calls the trip “unprecedented”, “shocking”, “extremely risky” and “very dangerous for the minister’s own reputation and an irresponsible thing to do in that climate”.

Scoop: in April 2018, Alexander Lebedev set up an unmonitored line between Boris Johnson, then foreign secretary, and Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, to discuss the Salisbury poisonings.

But the call never happened because...

tinyurl.com/2p99nc57 ....Johnson overslept.

Happened on his stay at the Lebedevs' in Umbria on the 28/9th April 2018.

He went there, without his security officers, from a Nato summit in Brussels where he told foreign ministers to do more to counter Russia's malign influence.

On his way back:

My report on "the single most awful example of Russian influence in British politics" reveals minutes where a Conservative peer pushed the Foreign Office's Russia minister on sanctions against Oleg Deripaska, his boss. With @MattRussell3 & @KatieGunning2.
tinyurl.com/j8u5vsmj At the end of my report on Evgeny Lebedev's fancy dress rise from son of a KGB agent to a seat in the House of Lords, I felt I'd left a question hanging. Who helped him? And not just Lebedev. For all the oligarchs welcomed in London, who opened the doors?

https://twitter.com/pcaruanagalizia/status/1499289115342385157

Previously unpublished emails reveal Petrofac agents tried to corrupt a $210m public contract on Iraqi oil field.

Petrofac was sentenced for separate bribery counts this week. Ayman Asfari, then CEO & Conservatives donor, wasn’t charged.

Me for @tortoise members.tortoisemedia.com/2021/10/08/the… When SFO arrested Asfari, one of Cameron’s former cabinet ministers approached a senior prosecutor, describing Asfari as exactly the kind of business leader Britain needs after Brexit. Senior prosecutor asked what he meant, former cabinet minister shrugged and said nothing.

UK revokes CenturionBet's licence in 2009 after Italian anti-Mafia investigation. It moves to Malta.

It hires Malta Gaming Authority’s former legal and enforcement director to set up.

Italy notifies Malta. MGA and Malta police investigate CenturionBet, finding no issues.

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https://twitter.com/FD/status/1290196639458762752

May 2017, Italian police arrest over 60 people, including Francesco Martiradonna, an 'Ndrangheta boss and suspected owner of CenturionBet.

CenturionBet, they found, reached playing volume of over €150m and €5m in annual profits within 2 years.

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