The US authorities will not allow Deripaska into the country. Maybe this has something to do with the revelations today by Keith Dovkants in the Evening Standard. The story claims that another Russian businessman, Mikhail Gutseriev, has been forced to flee Russia and seek sanctuary in Britain after being hounded by the Kremlin to sell his oil firm to Deripaska. Weeks after fleeing Moscow to escape charges that he says were trumped up, his son Chingis was killed in a mysterious car crash. Dovkants writes: The Gutseriev affair was known about in business circles in London and Moscow and although Mr Osborne may not have been aware of the case, Lord Mandelson, as a former EU trade commissioner almost certainly did... The Gutseriev affair could prove especially embarrassing for the Government. Gordon Brown may not enjoy having one Cabinet member, Lord Mandelson, defending his friendship with Mr Deripaska, while the department of another, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, has moved to safeguard a man who claims he is a casualty of activities by the Kremlin from which Mr Deripaska is likely to benefit. Despite Deripaska’s dubious record, it appears that as EU Trade Commissioner Mandelson had far more extensive links with him than he has let on. First we were told he had met Deripaska when he had been invited to a drinks party on his yacht last summer. Then it turned out he had been staying there. Yesterday it was revealed that he had actually known Deripaska since 2005, and that as the EU’s Trade Commissioner he reduced the tariff on aluminium as a result of which Deripaska netted tens of millions of dollars. Yet his EU spokesman not only denied any conflict of interest but even apparently misrepresented the chronology. As David Robertson reported in the Times: Lord Mandelson signed off a decision to remove the 14.9 per cent tariff in December 2005 and it was ratified by the Council of Ministers the following month. Lord Mandelson's former spokesman in Brussels told The Times that there could have been no conflict of interest in the decision to drop the tariff because the two men had not met. Asked by The Times to clarify when Lord Mandelson first met Mr Deripaska, his press officer at the European Commission, Michael Jennings, replied on his behalf: ‘Mr Mandelson has met Mr Deripaska at a few social gatherings in 2006 and 2007. He has never had a conversation with Mr Deripaska about aluminium.’ However, two reliable sources have confirmed that Lord Mandelson and Mr Deripaska had dinner at Cantinetta Antinori in Moscow in late January 2005. Lord Mandelson is thought to have flown to Moscow with Nathaniel Rothschild, the financier, after the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos. Yes, the same Nathaniel Rothschild who has just torpedoed George Osborne’s career. Although the Tories may not have known about Gutseriev – although they jolly well should have done – they should still have had nothing to do with Deripaska. You would think that a British politician would automatically clock any Russian oligarch as potential trouble and hasten in the opposite direction. But Osborne met him no fewer than four times during that weekend in Corfu. Why? Was he such scintillating company? And regardless of who initiated the fateful discussion about his possibly donating to the Conservative party and whether Deripaska was ever personally involved in such discussion, the fact is that it did take place between his intermediary Nat Rothschild, Osborne and the Tory party’s Chief Executive Andrew Feldman. Feldman is, if anything, even more significant than Osborne in this saga. For after Osborne had met Deripaska Feldman was brought to meet him from his neighbouring holiday villa. More significant still is what, according to the Tories’ own statement yesterday, Feldman said when the possibility was raised that Deripaska might contribute to the party: There was a discussion about British and American politics and in the course of which Mr Rothschild suggested to Mr Feldman that his friend, Mr Deripaska could be interested in making a party donation. Mr Feldman had not met Mr Deripaska previously and was not aware who he was. Mr Feldman made clear that there are very strict rules on donations to political parties in the UK. He explained that there are only two ways of giving a political donation. Firstly, if you appear as an individual on the UK electoral roll. Secondly, if the donation comes from a legitimate UK trading company. This is an explanation Mr Feldman gives regularly when asked about donations both privately and publicly. At this point Mr Rothschild said that Mr Deripaska owned UK trading companies including Leyland Daf. There was no discussion about how a donation by Mr Deripaska could be concealed or channelled. At no point did Mr Osborne or Mr Feldman solicit or ask for a donation, suggest ways of channelling a donation or express any wish to meet with Mr Deripaska to discuss donations. Rothschild has claimed that Feldman suggested that the money could be channelled through Leyland Daf, a British firm owned by Deripaska. The Tories claim that Feldman did no such thing and was merely setting out the law. This is frankly incredible. The proper response to any suggested donation would have been to terminate the conversation abruptly and to leave. To reply, as the Tories say Feldman did, by actually laying out the conditions under which such a donation can be made through a UK trading company – prompting the reply that, by an amazing coincidence, Deripaska just happened to own just such a company -- and then to say that At no point did Mr Osborne or Mr Feldman...suggest ways of channelling a donation is just risible. They didn’t need to suggest it in such explicit terms; all they had to do was lay out how it could be done. And then, having done precisely this, they actually went back onto Deripaska’s yacht. If they had inexplicably blundered into a compromising position, they would surely have been so horrified they would never have gone near the wretched boat again. As Lord Tebbit has so gnomically observed: If you sleep with dogs, you will get fleas. As I said yesterday, there is no question but that this is a big story. At the very least – and there is doubtless more that we do not yet know -- Osborne and Feldman displayed appalling judgment in having anything to do with this man at all. Nevertheless, it is also the case that the party did not take his money. By contrast, Mandelson’s association with Deripaska is potentially a much more serious matter. The question over whether Mandelson was guilty of a conflict of interest concerns a period when he was a paid official of the EU. He is now – as he doesn’t cease to remind us – a Cabinet minister in the British government with a responsibility for business, a position in which he may be of value once again to Oleg Deripaska, a man with a highly dubious record with whom the Business Secretary has enjoyed close links which he has sought to obfuscate. Next week Mandelson flies to Moscow at the head of a delegation of top British corporate figures, where he is expected to meet Russian tycoons and Kremlin ministers. Baffling even his own Labour benches, Gordon Brown said today there should be an official inquiry into Osborne’s dealings with Deripaska -- even though as Labour MP Tony Wright protested: We are not talking about corruption here. We are not talking about law-breaking. What there is, as someone said, is a twerp and a massive misjudgment. Indeed. Twerpdom and misjudgments, however colossal, may be career-breakers but are not in the same league as possible conflicts of interest by the Secretary of State for Business and former EU Trade Commissioner. Surely if there is to be a corruption inquiry it should be into Lord Mandelson’s dealings with Deripaska. Er, hang on a minute – Brown actually removed responsibility for tackling corruption from the Business Secretary’s brief when he appointed Mandelson to the job. Did he know something we don’t know??
Sleep With Dogs, You Get Fleas...
As more becomes known about Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch at the centre of the current political convulsions, it becomes ever clearer that both Labour and the Tories are irreparably compromised by the association of their senior politicians with this man.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
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