Lubov Chernukhin

Lubov Chernukhin (also called Luba Chernukhin), born November 1972, is a British citizen of Russian origin. Chernukhin is a former banker and the biggest female political donor in UK history, having donated over £2m to the Conservative Party in the period April 2012 to April 2020.

Career

Chernukhin has been reported to have been educated partly on the East coast of the US and to have come to the UK in around 2003. Chernukhin is a former banker, who has reportedly worked for firms such as ABN Amro. Chernukhin is one of three Russia-connected directors (Chernukhin, Alexander Temerko, Viktor Fedotov) of one entity (SEL (2010) LIMITED). Together they have directly and indirectly donated over £3.5m to the Conservative Party, including to three MPs who are or have been members of the Intelligence and Security Committee (Prichard, Villiers, Field) and one MP who served as Minister for Security and Deputy for EU Exit (Lewis).

Alexander Temerko is a major Conservative Party donor, reportedly to the value of £1.3m. Temerko is a Ukrainian-born former executive in the Russian oil industry and a former shareholder in the Yukos Oil Company, who had previously held positions in Russian state agencies under the Defence Ministry in charge of supplies and armaments. Temerko is reported to have business links to Leonid Nevzlin, who occupied various high-ranking positions at Group Menatep and its subsidiary, the Yukos Oil Company, and served as first deputy director general of the Russian news agency ITAR TASS.

Fedotov and Temerko are the ultimate owners of Aquind a company behind a proposed interconnector project that would form part of Critical National Infrastructure in the UK. Per the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: "Fedotov, 73, was the chairman of two companies that made more than £80m from a state-funded pipeline construction project alleged to have been mired in fraud, costing the Russian state vast sums....It led to a criminal investigation but no charges were filed and Fedotov was not personally accused of any wrongdoing."

Both men hold their ownership in Aquind via Luxembourg holding companies. Temerko is also a Director of Aquind. The Guardian reported: "The ultimate source of Aquind’s financial support remains unclear. Aquind’s UK accounts show it has received loans of more than £23m from OGN Enterprises, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. The owners of OGN are undisclosed." Aquind is reported to have donated £243,000 to the Conservative Party. Per the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: "Aquind ... together with its director Alexander Temerko, has donated to the Tory chancellor Rishi Sunak, business secretary Alok Sharma and Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis". Temerko's donations include money given to the constituency associations of several leading Conservative MPs, including Mark Pritchard (a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee) who received £5,000.

Personal life

In 2007 Lubov (née Golubeva) married Vladmir Chernukhin, a Russian former deputy minister of finance, former Chairman of Vnesheconombank (VEB), a bank and state corporation with reported close ties to the Russian government, and a former member of the boards of directors of JSC Sovcomflot, OJSC Aeroflot Russian Airlines and JSC Russian Agricultural Bank. They live in an £8m mansion, owned by an offshore trust, overlooking London's Regent's Park.

Question as to reliability as a witness

In February 2019 Mr. Justice Teare stated in relation to evidence given by Chernukhin in relation to her husband's case against Oleg Deripaska: "Her evidence about these matters suggests that in her evidence she was not being frank with the court. Thus, as with so many witnesses in this case I am unable to accept her evidence save where it is not disputed, where it is in accordance with the probabilities or is supported by contemporaneous documentation. Great caution is required before accepting her evidence."

Controversy relating to political payments in the United Kingdom

A leak of banks' "suspicious activity reports" - called the FinCEN Files - was reported as showing an $8m payment to Vladimir Chernukhin in Apr 2016 from a British Virgin Islands company linked to Suleyman Kerimov. The offshore company, called Definition Services Inc, was controlled by Kerimov's children. The documents purported to show the funding came from their father and it was Suleyman Kerimov who had the personal relationship with Chernukhin. Deutsche Bank had filed a suspicious activity report (SAR), noting the link to Kerimov and the payment to Vladimir Chernukhin. Deutsche said Definition was "registered and banking out of high risk jurisdictions and the commercial purpose of the transactions and the relationship between the parties could not be determined". Kerimov is named in the United States Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). In April 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on Kerimov. The majority of Lubov Chernukhin’s donations to the Conservatives (92% of the £2,109,279) took place after the reported receipt of funds by her husband from Kerimov. The transfer took place on 29 April 2016, two months before the EU referendum vote that led to Brexit. Vladimir Chernukhin has previously used an intermediary to avoid publicly disclosing an interest in a transaction.

"The Russia Report" did not specifically address alleged Russian influence activities in the Brexit campaign, but it concluded that Russian interference in UK politics is commonplace stating: “Money was also invested in extending patronage and building influence across a wide sphere of the British establishment – PR firms, charities, political interests, academia and cultural institutions were all willing beneficiaries of Russian money, contributing to a ‘reputation laundering’ process. In brief, Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal’, and there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene, and accepted because of their wealth."

Journalist and Russia expert Edward Lucas who writes for The Times, and who gave evidence to the parliamentary inquiry into Russian influence, told the BBC’s Panorama programme: "The Chernukhins, pleasant people that they might be… are not fit and proper people to make donations to a British political party." Lucas said he was "profoundly concerned by the access that, not only Lubov Chernukhin but also other rich Russians have to the heights of the Conservative Party, and to the government". OpenDemocracy also highlighted the acceptance of Chernukhin's material donations to the Conservatives (stated as "more than £450,000 to the Conservatives in the last year" as of 19 Nov 2019), despite a previous pledge by the Conservative Party to distance themselves from Russian money.

The Electoral Commission has raised concerns about political donations to the Conservatives from Lubov Chernukhin, according to emails released to the media platform OpenDemocracy in September 2020. OpenDemocracy's website states: "In July, the Electoral Commission sent an email to all staff ahead of the release of the parliamentary ‘Russia report’ into alleged interference in British politics. Subtitled “foreign interference?”, the email noted press reports about Russian donors in British politics, and particularly Chernukhin’s donations. This was not the first time the elections watchdog had mentioned Chernukhin to its staff. Last November, less than a month before the general election, the Electoral Commission wrote to its press team about “interesting donations” to the Conservatives, including from Chernukhin."

As of 06 June 2021, the Electoral Commission has recorded the following donations by Chernukhin to the Conservative Party: 57 x cash donations totalling £2,091,779, 1 x Impermissible Donor of £10,000, 1 x Non Cash Donation of £7,500, in total representing £2,109,279. Reported recipients of funds from Lubov Chernukhin include:

• Robert Courts: Courts' main Parliamentary interests are defence and foreign policy although his career prior to politics was as a personal injury/clinical negligence lawyer and there are 41 Conservative MPs who have military experience. He is credited by the House of Commons library with helping to lead the “parliamentary pressure” that led to the announcement of the Ministry of Defence's Combat Air Strategy, the programme for the eventual replacement of the Eurofighter Typhoon. He has become one of the leading parliamentary speakers on the Armed Forces, with a particular specialisation in the Royal Air Force. Courts represents RAF Brize Norton, the largest RAF base in the UK, and serves as the Vice Chair (RAF) of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Armed Forces. In August 2019, Courts was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of the State for the Environment, Theresa Villiers.
• Brandon Lewis: Lewis served as Minister for Security and Deputy for EU Exit from 2019 to 2020
• Theresa Villiers: Villiers was appointed as a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee on 13 July 2020 and previously sat on the National Security Strategy (Joint Committee) from November 2016 to November 2019.
• The constituency party of Mark Field: Field sat on the Intelligence and Security Committee.
• The constituency party of David Cameron:
• £2,037,372 to the Central Conservative Party

Payments reported to have been made by Lubov Chernukhin include:

• £45,000 paid for a tennis match with David Cameron (the then Prime Minister) and the Tories’ co-chairman Ben Elliott
• £160,000 paid to play tennis with Boris Johnson, the current Prime Minister who was then London’s Mayor, and the then Prime Minister, David Cameron
• £30,000 paid to have dinner with Gavin Williamson in the Churchill war rooms when he was Defence Secretary
• £135,000 for a dinner at the Goring Hotel with Theresa May, Karen Bradley, Northern Ireland Secretary; Baroness Evans, Leader of the Lords; Caroline Nokes, Immigration Minister; Amber Rudd, Work and Pensions Secretary; Andrea Leadsom, Leader of the Commons; and, Liz Truss, Treasury Chief Secretary
• £20,000 to dine with the then Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson

The Guardian's Oliver Bullough stated: "Over the past decade, £68bn has flowed from Russia into Britain’s offshore satellites such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman, Gibraltar, Jersey and Guernsey. That’s seven times more money than has flowed directly from Russia into the UK. (On top of that, some £94bn has poured out of Russia into Cyprus, £13bn into Switzerland, and £23bn into the Netherlands, which has its own network of tax havens.)." The process of moving money in to the UK was exposed by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in 2014 and is known as the 'Laundromat'.

Per Bullogh, "[MPs] have gladly accepted their political donations and patronised their charitable foundations. When journalists and academics pointed out that these murky fortunes could buy influence over our democracy and undermine the rule of law, they were largely dismissed as inconvenient Cassandras warning MPs to beware Russians bearing gifts" and that some are "concerned that Vladimir Putin might, through his power over his nation’s super-rich, be able to influence our institutions". Robert Courts, who has practised in public and regulatory law and proceeds of crime law, said Lubov Chernukhin was a "British citizen and is perfectly entitled to make political donations".  "All donations to the local Conservative Association are received in accordance with UK law and registered with the Electoral Commission," Courts said in a statement to the Local Democracy Reporting service reported in July 2020.