Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has called on the Conservatives to dismiss co-chairman, Ben Elliot, amid concerns over his links to wealthy Russians donating sums of money to the party.
Sir Keir said that the finances of oligarchs should not be allowed to “influence our politics” and that where Russian money in the UK was going was becoming a “growing concern” to the public.
The Labour party has claimed that donors with links to the Russian Federation have injected almost £2 million into the Conservatives since prime minister Boris Johnson appointed Elliot as co-chair in July 2019.
Speaking to the media in Birmingham after Labour’s victory in the Birmingham Erdington by-election, Sir Keir said: “It's in everybody's best interest if Ben Elliot steps back from his role [with the Conservatives] and I think he should actually be sacked from it.
“There's growing concern about the links between the Conservative party and Russian money. Ben Elliot is at the heart of that. We need to strip Russian money away from our politics and not allow it to influence our politics.”
Sir Keir added that if the Tories did not go “really hard” on economic sanctions, then it was indicative of the fact that the party is “reliant on Russian money” and public opinion would be swayed toward such a conclusion.
Any individuals donating money to the Conservative party are and must be holders of British citizenship, in accordance with electoral law. Conservative foreign minister and former party co-chair, Amanda Milling, said that many of the party’s Russian donors were “critics” of the current Russian regime under Vladimir Putin, adding that it was “completely wrong and discriminatory to tar them with the same brush.”
Outside of his work as co-chair of the Conservatives, Elliot’s luxury services company, Quintessentially, has a history of working with wealthy Russian clients.
In 2014, Elliot - the nephew of the Duchess of Cornwall - revealed that the business had put together a dedicated Russian team thanks to an “influx in Russian-speaking clients coming into London”, adding that the company was “doing very well within the Russian market.”
The business does operate an office in the Russian capital of Moscow but has removed mention of it among its 40 worldwide locations on its website since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has also denied having any links to individuals that have been sanctioned as part of ongoing economic measures against Russia.
A spokesperson for Elliot’s business told the Financial Times: “The group continues to actively monitor its member base and corporate clients to ensure that it is not servicing any individual or corporate body that is on the sanctions lists that have been issued by the UK, EU and US governments. Moreover, it can confirm that it definitively is not engaged with anyone on those lists.”
The latest oligarchs to join the list of sanctioned individuals at the time of writing are Alisher Usmanov and Igor Shuvalov, who were sanctioned on Thursday and had their assets frozen as well as being banned from entering the UK.
Usmanov is a billionaire who has previously been a shareholder in Arsenal Football Club, while Shuvalov is the former deputy prime minister of Russia and incumbent chair of the management board of VEB, one of the Russian banks recently subjected to a full asset freeze.
Foreign secretary Liz Truss said following the move: “Our message to Putin and his allies has been clear from day one – invading Ukraine would have serious and crippling economic consequences.
“Sanctioning Usmanov and Shuvalov sends a clear message that we will hit oligarchs and individuals closely associated with the Putin regime and his barbarous war. We won’t stop here. Our aim is to cripple the Russian economy and starve Putin’s war machine.”
Image taken from Wikimedia Commons
