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With the Labour Opposition calling for Russian propaganda to be regulated, John Sweeney investigates whether the Media Minister responsible has a conflict of interest
Labour Leader Keir Starmer has asked whether Britain should ban television channel RT (formerly Russia Today). Let’s examine the record of John Whittingdale, the Minister for Media and Data within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), responsible for defending us against Russia’s propaganda machine.
The DCMS is the lead department for policing our digital frontier and Whittingdale is in charge of its international strategy.
The Russia Report by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) stated: “The UK is clearly a target for Russia’s disinformation campaigns and political influence operations and must therefore equip itself to counter such efforts.”
Britain’s intelligence agencies told the committee: “They informed us that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) holds primary responsibility for disinformation campaigns.”
The Russia Report is scathing about the power of Moscow gold to win the hearts and minds of corrupt British figures, but the evidence remains in the shadows. As the report states: “The extent to which Russian expatriates are using their access to UK businesses and politicians to exert influence in the UK is ***.” The committee’s asterisks cover a multitude of sins.
The Firtash Connection
Some of what follows is an investigation into Whittingdale I carried out for the BBC in 2016 and 2017, which was never broadcast.
Whittingdale’s responsibilities at the DCMS include oversight of foreign television networks, including the Kremlin’s poodle network RT.
What is disturbing is just how often he has been the recipient of the generosity of a Soviet-born oligarch, Dmytro Firtash, currently being sought by the FBI for corruption charges.
The right-wing MP for Maldon, Margaret Thatcher acolyte and long-term Brexiter might play a get-out-of-jail card in that the registered money he received came via a cut-out for not a Russian but a Ukrainian oligarch – however one so close to the Kremlin that the distinction doesn’t bite.
Whittingdale’s love-in with Firtash is a sorry tale. Firtash’s silent business partner for some part of his career is alleged to have been Russia’s Al Capone-at-large, Semion “The Brainy Don” Mogilevich, himself linked to the Solntsevskaya Organized Crime Group. The source for the Firtash-Mogilevich connection was reportedly Firtash himself to then US Ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, in 2008. The world found out about their conversation in December 2010 thanks to a Wikileaks cable, although Firtash has denied what the ambassador said he said.
The big source of Firtash’s money has been his control of entities supplying Russian gas to Ukraine. Reportedly, Firtash used the gas gold to buy Ukrainian politicians to stay loyal to the Kremlin, up to and including disgraced Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. In 2014, Reuters reported on documents that pointed to Putin extending credit lines to Firtash of up to $11 billion which helped the oligarch influence the 2010 Presidential Election in Ukraine. Firtash and his entities deny any wrongdoing
In March 2014, Austrian authorities arrested Firtash on a multi-million bribery rap sought by the FBI. Firtash posted £105 million bail money, the largest get-out-jail note in Austrian history. For the moment, Firtash continues to insist on his innocence and remains in Austria while he battles the Americans who want to lock him up.
Firtash’s closeness to the Kremlin, his association with Trump consigliere-turned-convict Paul Manafort and his arrest warrant issued by the FBI are facts that can be reported and cannot be denied.
Whittingdale enjoyed £14,435 of free trips to Ukraine and Vienna paid for by the British Ukraine Society (BUS) which shared the same Knightsbridge address as the Firtash Foundation and the main Firtash entity, Group DF.
Whittingdale was for a time a director of the BUS, as was DF’s former CEO, Robert Shetler-Jones. The BUS is headed by ex-MP Richard Spring, now Lord Risby; on the advisory board is Lord Oxford who as Raymond Asquith, MI6 officer, got Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky out of Russia in a car boot. There is no suggestion that Shetler-Jones, Lords Oxford and Risby are now batting for the other side.
After Austrian police arrested Firtash on behalf of the FBI in March 2014 for his part in the alleged $18.5 million bribe scandal “using Group DF… to conceal bribe payments… using threats and intimidation… to further the goals of the criminal enterprise” – a multi-million-dollar titanium deal – Whittingdale carried on as before, making one final trip to Kyiv and two visits to Vienna where Firtash is now based courtesy of the BUS.
Conservative Friends of Russia – and Ukraine
In 2014, Whittingale was photographed in Ukrainian fancy dress in London with Maria Tymofienko, who styled herself in emails as “Assistant to John Whittingdale MP Chair All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ukraine”.
Tymofienko set up an interview with a Ukrainian television station for her boss. That October, Maria popped up in the House of Commons as the founder of the Global Friends of Ukraine (GFU), with patron John Whittingdale, who stuck the event on his website.
That same month, Tymofienko was photographed with another ex-Soviet oligarch, Alexander Temerko, and Conservative minister Philip Hammond at the Tory Party conference in Birmingham.
Whittingdale did not register Maria as a Commons researcher. Tymofienko is now working on an £800,000 scheme promoting intellectual property in Ukraine at QMC London funded by the British Government.
She told Byline Times: “my involvement with the Ukraine APPG [All-Party Parliamentary Group] was entirely voluntary on an informal and part-time basis. I was not remunerated. As a Ukrainian living in the UK, I am a patriot and wished to assist my home country in a time of crisis.
“John Whittingdale has for many years been a champion of Ukraine and one of the most outspoken MPs in defending Ukraine against Russian aggression.”
Other Ukrainians are critical of Whittingdale for evidently being closely connected to Firtash, given the latter’s chumminess with the Kremlin.
The Whittingdale-Firtash connection made his reappointment last summer to the DCMS (albeit at the lower peg as Minister of State as opposed to Secretary of State) by new Prime Minister Boris Johnson all the more surprising.
But his return to the frontbench might be explained by the fact that his one-time special advisor was Carrie Symonds, the Prime Minister’s partner and mother of his fifth or sixth child. Symonds and Whittingdale were fixtures at beanos thrown by the Conservative Friends of Russia, a group set up with the help of Sergey Nalobin, widely suspected of being an FSB spy.
Whittingdale was honorary vice-president of Conservative Friends of Russia until it was disbanded. To complete the set, Firtash’s charity front, the Firtash Foundation, had Jack Wakefield as a director for a time. Jack’s sister Mary is married to the Prime Minister’s chief advisor, Dominic Cummings. It looks like Happy Families, Russia-style.
And then there is the sex.
The Sex
Back in April 2016, Whittingdale’s adventurous private life was the subject of a joke by then Chancellor George Osborne in a speech to the parliamentary lobby.
Osborne listed the various economic models that could form the basis for Brexit – “the Canadian model”, “the Norwegian model”, “the Albanian model” – before adding that was enough about “Mr Whittingdale’s relationships”.
Whittingdale, then Culture Secretary, was in the room and appeared to take the gag well as he roared with laughter. But the joke was at the public’s expense. Whittingdale had been protected from scrutiny for a long time.
By the spring of 2016, four newspapers – the Mirror, the Sun, the Mail on Sunday and The Independent – had the story of Whittingdale’s extraordinary relationship with professional dominatrix Olivia King, also known as “Mistress Kate”, but had not run it. A gangster with a conviction for firearms was also reportedly going out with King at the same time as Whittingdale and was trying to sell tapes of King talking about what she did with the then Culture Secretary.
The dam broke first with a piece by Nick Mutch on Byline.com, setting out Whittingdale’s non-registration of a trip with King to the MTV Awards in Amsterdam. Jim Cusick then reported on Byline how his former editor at The Independent, Amol Rajan, had killed the story.
Cusick wrote that “Amol Rajan had a problem. The Independent was a tenant of Associated Newspapers” – and the Mail group, Cusick suggested, liked Whittingdale’s policy of not implementing the full Leveson reforms on Fleet Street.