4 2GM Wednesday January 19 2022 | the times
News
since 2012. Aquind itself has donated a
further £500,000 over the same period.
Viktor Fedotov, who holds a control-
ling stake in the company, is a former
vice-president of Lukoil. The Times
reported his ownership of Aquind last
year. He had been allowed not to
disclose his identity as a result of a rare
corporate transparency exemption.
Aquind has said the project could
power 5 per cent of British homes. The
plan is to install a 148-mile cable, carry-ing up to two gigawatts, from Lovedean,
near Portsmouth, to Normandy.
The law firm Schillings said on behalf
of the company: “Aquind’s application... is a formal planning process which
has been subject to rigorous, apolitical,
expert assessment by the independent
examining authority. The unsubstanti-
ated personal views expressed by
Penny Mordaunt MP have no rele-
vance to this process.
“Furthermore, her recent comments
seem likely to be based on political
interests and leave the impression of an
ulterior motive to try to curry favour in
her constituency by exploiting her
status as a government minister. This
seems to constitute a regrettable breach
of the ministerial code.”
Schillings said Aquind was a British
company, whose directors and share-
holders were all British citizens, and
that it fully and transparently complied
with all relevant laws and regulations.Vanishing point Only hardy souls ventured out on an icy morning yesterday on the Long Walk, which stretches three miles from Windsor Castle. Weather, page 56
Council’s energy crisis
The Labour-led Warrington
council risks losing tens of
millions of pounds after the
energy company it backed
collapsed amid soaring wholesale
prices. It bought a 50 per cent
stake in Together Energy in 2019
for £18 million and is believed to
have £27 million of loans and
guarantees tied up in the firm,
which had 176,000 customers.Broadband plan stalls
The public accounts committee is
“not convinced” the government
will hit its target of delivering
broadband speeds of 1 gigabit
(1,000 megabits) per second to
85 per cent of UK premises by- Its report said little progress
was seen and there was no
detailed plan to reach places
where it is not commercially
viable. The average is 64Mbps.
752 miles on one charge
A start-up business claims to
have modified an electric car that
can go 752 miles on a single
charge. Our Next Energy fitted
its own experimental battery to a
Tesla Model S that was driven at
an average speed of 55mph. The
company specialises in batteries
and hopes that by helping to
eliminate “range anxiety” it can
increase adoption of electric cars.Government wins case
The government has overturned
a High Court ruling that a
£550,000 contract given in 2020
to a company whose founders
were friends of Boris Johnson’s
former adviser Dominic
Cummings was unlawful and
biased. The Court of Appeal
judge Lord Burnett said the
original legal judgment had been
an “unprecedented outcome”.Burglar’s slow getaway
A disabled burglar used an 8mph
mobility scooter as his getaway
vehicle. John Francis, 44, stole
from a family’s home in
Worcester after crawling in
through a kitchen window on
May 26. Days later he tried to
break into a student’s bedroom
but was seen and photographed
riding away on his scooter, after
which police raided his home. He
was jailed for 26 months at
Worcester crown court on
Monday for burglary, attempted
burglary and fraud.AAABCDDE
EEEFGH I I
I K L L MMM N
RRSTTUWYSolve all five clues using each
letter underneath once only1 Go by air (3)2 Halfway point (6)3 Small breed of chicken (6)4 Type of warship (7)5 Item added for completeness (10)Quintagram® No 1216
Solutions MindGames in Times
Cryptic clues Page 10 of TimesJONATHAN BRADY/PAUndersea cable is threat to our
energy security, minister warns
George Greenwood, Steven Swinford Profile
T
he prime
minister and
Alexander
Temerko, the
face of Aquind,
are said to be so close
they refer to each other
as “Sasha” in private, a
Russian diminutive for
Alexander and the first
name on Boris Johnson’s
birth certificate (George
Greenwood writes).
The Tory donor’s
website is littered with
photos of the pair
together, including one of
them embracing at a
dinner in tuxedos,
Temerko with
champagne flute in hand.
The Ukrainian-born
businessman became a
Conservative patron
having enjoyed a high-
powered career in Russia.
He took over as head of
state-owned weapons
firm Russkoye Oruzhie or“Russian weapons” in
1995, and then become a
senior executive of Yukos,
the Russian oil and gas
company, in 2000.
The firm fell foul of
power struggles between
post-Soviet oligarchs and
Vladimir Putin in 2003
with the arrest of Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, its chief
executive. Temerko
moved to the UK and
took citizenship in 2011.
Temerko has been a
passionate advocate for
Aquind in public and
private. The Times has
revealed his extensive
lobbying of ministers to
support it, contacting
Kwasi Kwarteng, the
business secretary, and
his predecessors Alok
Sharma and Andrea
Leadsom, the then EU
chief negotiator Lord
Frost, and the energy
ministers Claire Perryand Anne-Marie
Trevelyan to discuss the
project.
Trevelyan got into hot
water in November last
year after it emerged that
she had failed to declare
to parliament that she
had received lobbying
correspondence from
Temerko, after a question
from Ed Miliband, the
shadow business
secretary.
Victor Fedotov, the
Russian-born former
vice-president of the oil
and gas firm Lukoil,
favours the limelight
somewhat less than his
business partner.
Born in Ufa, Fedotov
trained as an engineer
before joining Aquind in
1990, later becoming one
of its vice-presidents.
Fedotov, who has
properties in Hampshire
and Chelsea, westLondon, had previously
been granted anonymity
as owner of the firm by
Companies House, which
normally requires the
“person with significant
control” of a company to
be identified.
An exemption can be
made only if the person
successfully argues that
their security is at risk.
The Times understands
that security and law
enforcement agencies
have no concerns that
Fedotov is “at risk”. His
identity was discovered
through public records in
Luxembourg related to
Aquind’s holding
company.
After this paper
revealed his identify in
2020, Aquind’s
Companies House
records were updated to
acknowledge his control
of the company.A government minister has said that a
£1.2 billion project to connect the
British and French power grids must
not go ahead.
Before a decision on whether to
approve the scheme this week, Penny
Mordaunt, a trade minister and former
defence secretary, came out against it.
Aquind, the company behind the
project, plans to lay a power and com-
munications cable under the Channel.
Mordaunt said that this would make
Britain more reliant on France, which
has threatened to interrupt supplies in
disputes over fishing. “The French have
already said they will turn off the
power. They will use future energy
supply as a bargaining chip,” she said.
“That doesn’t help our energy security.”
Kwasi Kwarteng, the business sec-
retary, has delayed a decision on the
interconnector project several times
but must make up his mind before
January 21.
Two businessmen behind the com-
pany have links to Russia, both having
been senior figures in oil and gas
businesses in the country.
Alexander Temerko, a director, ran a
Russian arms company before becom-
ing a senior executive for the energy
business Yukos. Temerko, who was
born in Ukraine and took UK citizen-
ship in 2011, has donated £730,000 to
the Conservative Party and its MPs
Alexander Temerko
ran a Russian oil
company and is a
Tory party donor