The prime minister told MPs that he had “certainly met” Lebedev, also a former owner of the Independent, and acknowledged that the meeting had taken place in private and, after a pause, said the meeting had taken place “in Italy as it happens”. Indeed, Johnson had made a trip to a restored castle in Perugia owned by Yevgeny Lebedev, Alexander’s son, in April 2018 for a weekend party immediately after NATO foreign ministers attended a meeting in Brussels to discuss the security situation with Russia. Johnson was answering questions from Labour’s Meg Hillier at the Commons liaison committee on Wednesday. When pressed on whether he had mentioned the party meeting to Foreign Office officials, he added: “I think I did, yes.” A record of the trip was first revealed by Johnson to the register of members’ interests, which recorded that he had an “overnight stay” with Evgeny Lebedev on Saturday 28 April, traveling “accompanied by a spouse, family member or friend”. At first Johnson repeatedly refused to explain the nature of the trip, in response to questions from the Guardian and whether he took his official security team with him. No meeting with Alexander was mentioned in the revelation. Shortly thereafter, a photo of Johnson surfaced at a nearby airport in Italy the following Sunday. Other passengers at the airport said the then foreign secretary looked like he had “slept in his clothes”, had trouble walking in a straight line and told other passengers he had had a rough night. Several months later, the Observer revealed that Johnson had met Alexander Lebedev during the party – a meeting confirmed not by the politician but by a representative of the media owner. “He goes there [Italy] often to stay with his son. She is in Europe a lot and has met almost all of Evgeny’s friends here over the years. Therefore, there is nothing particularly unusual about the meeting,” Lebedev’s spokesman said at the time. During the late Cold War period, Alexander Lebedev was stationed as a spy in London in 1988. After the fall of the Soviet Union he became involved in business, including the media, and never sought to hide his KGB past. In a memoir, Hunt the Banker, Lebedev briefly recounts his espionage career, which ended in 1992 with the rank of colonel. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Last month, Alexander Lebedev was hit with financial sanctions by Canada for “directly fueling” Russia’s war in Ukraine, prompting him to step down as director of a company linked to the Independent. It has not been sanctioned by the UK or any other major country. Johnson’s relationship with Evgeny has also come under scrutiny. Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee is investigating Johnson’s appointment of Evgeny as a peer despite initial concerns raised by MI5 about his father’s previous employment with the KGB.
