Boris has now seemingly given up all pretence of being a Mayor for the city and people of London and is now quite blatantly a Mayor for the following:
- Bankers (nothing new there, they bankrolled him twice)
- Lawyers (a recent robust defence of the scandal of UK courts being used to settle disagreements between oligarchs refers, the main beneficiaries of which are rich London law firms)
- Oligarchs, particularly those who own newspapers – Rupert Murdoch, the Barclay brothers and, of course, Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev
Reference to the third comes in the release of hospitality records which include the startling revelation:
| 14/10/2012 | Car Farnborough airport- home | Sarah Sands, Editor, Evening Standard |
| 12/10/2012 | 2 return flighs to Perugia, Italy | Evgeny Lebedev |
| 12/10/2012 | 2 nights accomodation, Terranova, Perugia, Italy | Evgeny Lebedev |
The 12th was a Friday and the 14th a Sunday, so it is, at least, nominally in his own time, we’ll allow him the occasional POETS. However, those two flights to Perugia plus the return on Sunday from Farnborough raise eyebrows – Farnborough is not a commercial airline destination but a private jet one, so did Mr. Lebedev give the elected Mayor a free ride in his personal aeroplane and if so, why? Possible enlightenment comes from a 2009 Telegraph piece:
He agreed to meet me for a day and a half at his hotel in Italy rather than at his home in Moscow. When I pick him up from his chartered private jet at Perugia airport, Mikhail Gorbachev is standing next to him.
‘He’ in this case is Alexander Lebedev, father of Evgeny. So we know he uses private jets into Perugia, we also know he has an extremely posh and exclusive hotel there (the Palazzo Terranova no less, and here’s a Conde Nast Traveller review). Or is it a hotel?
“Of course I went to parties,” says the son, “but I don’t have time for that anymore.” It is the beginning of the week, and he is sitting on the terrace of the family estate in the hills of Umbria, not far from Perugia. The 17th-century palace is also a luxury hotel. Evgeny likes taking care of the furniture personally.
If you own an estate part of which is a hotel and invite a friend to stay, isn’t he really a house guest, not a hotel guest? So, Boris appears to have been flown to Umbria in the Lebedevs’ plane (likely a charter jet from one of the European leasing outfits), put up by the Lebedevs at their country estate/boutique hotel, flown back on the Lebedevs’ plane and finally driven back from the airfield at the expense of the editor of the paper owned by the Lebedevs. Do you know what? I reckon there’s a fighting chance the Lebedevs will end up paying that as well.
Now, harking back to the extraordinary rendition scandal, it’s odds on someone keeps a track of aircraft movements at Farnborough and sure enough we have the following movements for 12/10 and 14/10:
Friday afternoon (including helicopters, airliners and piston aircraft which it’s unlikely he flew on):
12/10/2012 12:49 OE-HGE GALX TJS61 - Tyrolean Jet Services 12/10/2012 13:07 G-CIEL C56X KRH72R - London Executive Aviation 12/10/2012 13:11 A9C-ACE CL60 - Bahraini? Or TAG? 12/10/2012 13:23 N1BX GLF4 - Baxter Healthcare? 12/10/2012 13:30 N550GD GLF5 - Gulfstream Aerospace 12/10/2012 13:37 D-CXLS C56X AHO329N - Air Hamburg 12/10/2012 14:08 G-WNCH BE20 - Synergy Aviation 12/10/2012 14:23 N301AJ C510 - private owner 12/10/2012 14:31 G-FRYL PRM1 MHN492 - OXE (?) 12/10/2012 14:38 OE-ILB CRJ2 VJS807 - VistaJet 12/10/2012 14:42 EC-LDS ASTR TGM241S - TAG (Spain) 12/10/2012 15:44 M-LENR BE20 - BAe Systems Marine 12/10/2012 16:09 G-KTIA H25B - TAG 12/10/2012 16:11 M-SPEX B350 SSZ8B - Specsavers Aviation 12/10/2012 16:14 OE-INE CL60 VJS642 - VistaJet 12/10/2012 16:17 CS-DUC H25B NJE140D - NetJets 12/10/2012 16:29 G-TDSA F406 - William Johnston, Mark Evans 12/10/2012 16:33 G-MAJG JS41 EZE101 - Eastern Airways 12/10/2012 16:39 G-DOLF AS65 - McAlpine Helicopters Ltd 12/10/2012 16:43 LX-JCD C56X - JC Decaux 12/10/2012 16:49 G-FIRM C550 MCE3B - Marshalls of Cambridge 12/10/2012 16:54 HB-JGE GLEX FPG777 - TAG 12/10/2012 18:08 G-CGMB E135 - Eastern Airways 12/10/2012 18:50 OE-GVQ LJ60 VJS209 - VistaJet
Sunday arrivals:
14/10/2012 08:19 OE-LXX GLEX - VistaJet 14/10/2012 08:43 G-PEPE C56X LNX31PE - London Executive Aviation 14/10/2012 10:56 S5-AAP A319 ADR788 - Adria 14/10/2012 11:24 CS-DXQ C56X NJE6MA - NetJets 14/10/2012 12:15 G-TAGF F900 - TAG Group, although apparently it's Roman Abramovich's! 14/10/2012 12:44 D-IIVA P180 - AirGo Flugservice 14/10/2012 13:09 9H-ALX A319 MLM024 - Comlux Malta 14/10/2012 13:23 N4T GLEX - New World Jet Corp 14/10/2012 14:50 OD-EAS H25B - private 14/10/2012 14:54 11-111 B734 VM904 - bogus 14/10/2012 16:05 CS-DFG F2TH NJE2QP - NetJets 14/10/2012 16:26 M-ONAV H25B - Monavia Ltd 14/10/2012 16:37 M-HOTB GLF5 - Darwin Air 14/10/2012 16:59 D-CFLY C56X AHO348G - Air Hamburg 14/10/2012 17:40 G-RUBE E135 LNX55GE - London Executive Aviation 14/10/2012 17:55 G-MGNE E55P FLJ181 - Flairjet 14/10/2012 17:57 M-LJGI F2TH - Ven Air 14/10/2012 18:05 LX-JCD C56X - JC Decaux 14/10/2012 18:10 G-MPMP CL60 - MP Aviation LLP 14/10/2012 18:15 G-LDFM C56X - MAS Airways 14/10/2012 18:24 CS-DKJ G550 - NetJets 14/10/2012 18:26 G-LALE E135 - Eastern Airlines 14/10/2012 18:33 CS-DFF F2TH - NetJets Europe 14/10/2012 18:39 N888FR GLF4 - ICA Global Services LLC 14/10/2012 18:48 OE-GVG LJ60 - VistaJet 14/10/2012 19:13 VP-BRM B737 - TAG Group, they fly it a lot around Europe, particularly to Switzerland. Has an odd antenna fit... 14/10/2012 19:39 G-GMAA LJ45 - Gama Aviation
Time and a baby preclude greater analysis here, but the only registration that appears twice is LX-JCD, operated by the billboard firm JC Decaux, which would be rather odd.
What we don’t have an earthly clue about is why he went there (or, indeed, who with), although being a weekend he presumably wrote his 15/10/2012 chickenfeed column for the Telegraph from there, all about how Mrs. Thatcher should get the Nobel Peace Prize for saving us from Communism in the 1980s. Boris’s host Alexander Lebedev, of course, spent the 1980s working in London for, er, the KGB.
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Not that odd JC Decaux might want to be in BoJo’s favour – TfL have one of the country’s most lucrative billboard contracts which is currently with Decaux’s biggest rival
Smells like a Guppy to me!
“Chartered” is a tell – it’s probably one of the NetJets ones, (as they’re the market leader) and because they’re more like an airline than a charter operation, you wouldn’t expect him to come back on the same aircraft.