THE Conservative Party continues to be embroiled in the Pandora Papers scandal as more comes to light about party donors with links to alleged corruption.
On Monday, the BBC and Guardian revealed a businessman whose companies have donated more than £1 million to the Tories has made millions from an allegedly corrupt Russian pipeline deal.
The BBC discovered documents showing Fedotov as a secret owner of a company called VNIIST that benefitted from hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts from Transneft, the Russian state-owned oil and gas pipeline company.
Fedotov has also been revealed as the secret majority owner of Aquind, the company seeking approval from the UK Government for its contentious undersea power connector from the UK to France.
Fedotov was identified in the massive leak along with Alexander Temerko, a Ukraine-born part-owner and public face of the company.
READ MORE: Rishi Sunak defends Tories after Panama papers linked to major party donor
Temerko is a personal friend of the Prime Minister and is a regular at Tory fundraisers, having personally donated more than £700,000.
The fraud allegations are strongly denied by Fedotov.
A decision on the £1.2bn proposal for the energy link between between Portsmouth and Normandy is due in a matter of weeks.
Three Conservative ministers have already had to recuse themselves from the decision-making process over the project because of their links to the company.
Boris Johnson now faces questions over Tory party donations and links to individuals with connections to alleged corruption.
The Pandora Papers contain 11.9 million files revealing the hidden wealth of billionaires and world leaders – and among its revelations includes another big Tory donor.
Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of a former Russian minister, has donated more than £1.8m to the Tories since 2012.
Now, the leaked documents reveal that her personal wealth comes from her husband Vladimir.
Vladimir is linked financially to people who were close to the Kremlin. However, Lubov's lawyers say as she is a British citizen she is entitled to do what she wants with her money.
Her donations to the Conservative Party have seen her play tennis with Boris Johnson and dine with Theresa May when she was prime minister.
The source of Lubov's wealth was previously hidden but the Pandora Papers show that Lubov and her husband are linked to a network of 32 companies and more than £100m in assets.
Earlier on Monday, the Tories were also facing scrutiny over Mohammed Amersi, another tory donor who was discovered to be involved in one of Europe’s biggest corruption scandals.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson asked 'how many £20 notes to Tories secures a peerage
Amersi has donated around £525,000 to the Tories since 2018 and now it has been shown he has worked on a number of controversial deals for a Swedish telecoms firm.
The Swedish company was later fined £700m by US authorities over the deal and accepted that the money given to Karimov’s daughter Gulnara was a “corrupt payment”.
Documents are reported to show that Amersi advised Telia on a complex transaction worth £162m with the daughter of Uzbekistan’s authoritarian ruler Islam Karimov.
A Tory spokesperson said: "Fundraising is a legitimate part of the democratic process.
"Government policy is in no way influenced by the donations the Party receives."
They added the party is "motivated by the priorities of the British public, acting in the national interest".
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