UNDER SCRUTINY

Top Donation to U.K. Conservative Party Tied to Russian Account, Report Says

The money is said to have been part of a 2018 fundraising blitz for Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his party.

A top donation to Britain’s Conservative Party has reportedly come under scrutiny over suspicions it was funneled through a Russian bank account. The New York Times reports that the $630,225 donation was made in the name of an affluent art dealer, Ehud Sheleg, who served as the Tory party’s treasurer. The money is said to have been part of a 2018 fundraising blitz for Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his party. Citing documents, the Times says the money actually came from a Russian bank account belonging to Sergei Kopytov, Sheleg’s father-in-law, a former politician in Ukraine who owns properties in Crimea. “We are able to trace a clear line back from this donation to its ultimate source,” Barclays was quoted writing in a January 2021 alert on the funds to Britain’s National Crime Agency. The bank raised the question of whether the donation was money-laundering, or an illegal campaign donation. A lawyer for Sheleg told the Times there was “no basis” for thinking the funds from Kopytov were used in the campaign donation but acknowledged that Sheleg and his wife had been gifted money from his father-in-law prior to the donation. Kopytov, in a statement through Sheleg’s lawyer, said he is a Ukrainian citizen with “no interest in British politics whatsoever” and had not made any political donations.