Our beloved leader’s past actions come back to haunt him in today’s Sunday Times. Just like Trump however, his fan club will find ways of excusing or ignoring the lack of morals, the dishonesty, the sheer repulsive entitlement of the man.
Boris Johnson, his glamorous friend Jennifer Arcuri and their global trade trips
September 22 2019, 12:01am,
From New York to Singapore and London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’, the former model Jennifer Arcuri’s reputation as a tech pioneer rested on her friendship with the PM
Arcuri posing in 2013, the year she attended the Tory party conference
Arcuri posing in 2013, the year she attended the Tory party conferenceVICKI COUCHMAN
The delegates for the high-level London technology trade mission to Tel Aviv had been chosen and the preparations were in full swing when a last-minute call came in to the trip’s organisers from the office of Boris Johnson, the London mayor. The mayor’s office wanted another person to be added to the delegates list for the trade mission, which Johnson was leading. The name of the new person was familiar to London & Partners (L&P), the mayor’s promotional agency, which was making the arrangements.
The former model turned tech entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri had already been turned away by L&P when she applied to be selected as a delegate for the November 2015 trade mission. Her business did not fit with the theme of the trip.
However, the late request to bring Arcuri along was from the mayor’s office. So L&P followed orders and instructed its travel agent to book Arcuri into the hotel in Tel Aviv alongside the other delegates.
The trip was to be the third foreign trade mission Arcuri had attended alongside Johnson in the space of a year, and yet she had not been eligible to take part in any of them. She was also the only one of the 15 delegates who had been on the mayor’s two previous trips and, indeed, an official told this newspaper, businesses are rarely afforded the privilege of being allowed to go on more than one trip.
Boris Johnson and Jennifer Arcuri on stage at her Innotech summit in 2013, during his time as mayor of London
Boris Johnson and Jennifer Arcuri on stage at her Innotech summit in 2013, during his time as mayor of LondonSUNDAY TIMES INSIGHT
Sometimes secrets are written on walls, or in this case computer screens. A simple Google search of the name Jennifer Arcuri instantly shows a tangle of links to the man who is now prime minister.
The pair crossed paths at Tory party conferences, London tech events and a fundraising ball. They mingled in Tel Aviv, New York, Singapore and Malaysia, as well as Arcuri’s spacious top-floor rented flat in Shoreditch High Street, east London. They were close friends.
As well as the trade missions, her companies were given two sponsorship grants by L&P, and she went on to secure a £100,000 grant earlier this year from Johnson’s former ministerial colleague Margot James in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
However, in his position as mayor, Johnson was bound by the Greater London Authority’s code of conduct “to declare any private interests relating to their public duties and to take steps to resolve any conflicts arising in a way that protects the public interest”. He was also expressly barred from providing any undue benefits to friends.
Arcuri was 27 years old when she first encountered Johnson in 2012. It was a meeting that would shape her career. She had grown up in America and dabbled in fashion modelling and films before heading to London for a one-year MBA course.
Arcuri demonstrates the dancing pole in her London flat, where Johnson visited her
Arcuri demonstrates the dancing pole in her London flat, where Johnson visited herSUNDAY TIMES INSIGHT
Towards the end of her course, she joined the Conservative campaign team seeking to rally support for Johnson to be elected to London mayor for a second term. She was photographed in the blue campaign T-shirt holding up a poster with the slogan “Better off with Boris”.
On Facebook, she also posted other photographs in which she is alongside Johnson on the campaign bus. The caption to one of this set of photos reads: “This is the day Innotech was born.”
Innotech was Arcuri’s first entrepreneurial venture after leaving business school. It was conceived as a series of networking “summits” bringing together young technology entrepreneurs based in east London’s “Silicon Roundabout” — also known as Tech City — with politicians and policy-makers.
The key to it all was Arcuri’s new connection with Johnson, who gave her a big name she could promote as the guest speaker. Johnson went on to appear at four of her events — his mayoral title enhancing their credibility.
Within a year Arcuri was appearing in the pages of The Sunday Times Business section. And she would go on to be cited as one of “the 25 coolest women in UK tech” by the website Business Insider.
The citation said her summits had become well known “thanks to her close ties with London mayor Boris Johnson” who “has repeatedly agreed to speak at the event”.
The mayor’s promotional arm L&P also joined the bandwagon. In October 2013, it gave Innotech £10,000 in sponsorship to advertise its name at Arcuri’s event at the World Islamic Economic Forum event in London, where Johnson was speaking. The following summer, L&P also paid Innotech a further £1,500 to sponsor an event in the House of Commons.
L&P has said it can find no record of whether Johnson was involved in the decision to sponsor Arcuri’s company. Johnson, however, oversaw L&P which he created and his office joint funded.
Arcuri’s company did not become a commercial success in the long term. It never posted a profit and its losses are now about £350,000, according to the latest accounts.
She made no secret, however, of her admiration for Johnson. When attending Conservative Party conference in Manchester in 2013, she snapped a photo of Johnson telling jokes from the podium and posted it online with the caption: “The laughter in the room makes this whole week worth it.”
Throughout 2013 and 2014, Arcuri posted numerous photos from public events of Johnson.
Sources have confirmed that Johnson had also begun visiting Arcuri at her flat in Shoreditch. It was a spacious apartment, which cost £2,600 a month to rent, and had a chrome dancing pole taking pride of place in the living room.
Arcuri, left, posing with other models
Arcuri, left, posing with other modelsSUNDAY TIMES INSIGHT
On the floor beneath there was a flat with multiple security doors where people bought and took class-A and class-B drugs. The flat was later closed down in 2016 for three months after a police raid on the drugs den. It is not suggested that Arcuri, the owner or any of the other residents were involved with the activities of the gang.
The building is owned by Chandan Daryanani, who struck up a friendship with Arcuri. Daryanani said he was told by Arcuri that Johnson had visited the property “many times” and added proudly: “He used my property, yeah.” He went on: “She mentioned once he was one of her best friends.”
Another source, who does not wish to be named, said Johnson would visit the flat during afternoon breaks in his mayoral diary. A third source described how Arcuri would hold text conversations with Johnson from the flat.
In November 2014, Arcuri was one of 26 delegates chosen to travel alongside Johnson on a trade mission to Singapore and Malaysia as part of his mayoral export programme. The delegates were selected by a two-person panel comprising of Sara French, the mayor’s export programme manager, and a civil servant from the trade department.
To qualify for the trip, all the delegates had to be able to show that their companies had been trading for at least 12 months. However, Arcuri had applied to join the delegation saying she was representing a video-technology venture, called Playbox, which had been set up just three months earlier.
She was the only one of the 26 delegates who did not meet the selection criteria for the trip, which cost the taxpayer £35,000 overall and was run from City Hall. The delegates paid for air travel to and from the UK, but all the other costs such as meals, hotels and internal flights were picked up by the taxpayer.
French has said — through her new employer L&P — she was not aware of any pressure being exerted to choose Arcuri for the trade mission. She recalls that the decision taken to waive the “trading history requirement” for Playbox was because of “Arcuri’s wider entrepreneurial success”. Playbox folded the following year without filing accounts and Arcuri’s only other company, Innotech, had recorded losses of £41,000 at the time the delegates were being chosen.
During the trip to Israel, Arcuri posted photos of Johnson on social media and expressed excitement at his arrival.
Weeks later Arcuri inquired about joining another Johnson trade mission to New York that was being organised by L&P for the beginning of February 2015.
She was knocked back immediately, however. She was told by L&P that it was not worth applying because the trade mission was for fintech companies and neither of her companies were in that sector.
However, Arcuri turned up in New York while the trip was taking place and was allowed to join events alongside the delegation after receiving permission from Johnson and one of his senior advisers. An internal email, released by L&P, said: “Please though put her [Arcuri] on the list for our tech event in NY. I assume she will stay on and do the TLA/Innovate Finance event.
“She has been speaking to Boris and [names a senior adviser] about her being in NY and they are both, apparently, happy with that. So we should treat her as simply another member of the London tech community.”
L&P told this newspaper: “The record shows the team understood Arcuri would attend some events in New York, and that she had agreed this with the mayor and a senior adviser.”
There was a similar story for the next London mayor’s trip to Tel Aviv that November. By this time Arcuri had set up a new company called Hacker House, which aimed to promote cyber-security.
Arcuri applied to the mayor’s export programme to join the trip but was told that her company was not eligible. She was turned down by French. However, French recalled she was subsequently “informed by an L&P colleague that Arcuri had secured permission from a mayoral adviser to attend Tel Aviv alongside the delegation”.
The spokesman said the adviser was from Johnson’s inner political team. “Sara [French] was asked to arrange Arcuri's hotel, with Arcuri meeting her own costs,” the spokesman added.
The instruction from the mayor’s office had clearly been made at the 11th hour. The booking of Arcuri’s hotel in Tel Aviv was sent to her on the day she flew to Israel, and L&P said she later reimbursed the travel agent for her £1,200 bill.
Her attendance on the trade mission raised eyebrows when the delegates gathered in Tel Aviv. One of the officials from the trip expressed surprise to see her because she was not on the official list. He said: “It’s quite something that she went on so many trips because she was not a serious player in the tech sector. Delegates are normally only invited on one trade mission trip. She spoke about ethical hacking. I’ve never really understood what that meant.”
Another delegate described how Arcuri had tried to grab Johnson’s phone to show how she could make it more secure. The delegate said Arcuri was open about her friendship with Johnson.
It was Johnson’s last trade mission as mayor as he had been re-elected to parliament in the summer and was standing down from City Hall in May 2016.
Arcuri was moving on too. She had left London to live in Cheshire and had met a cyber-security expert called Matthew Hickey who joined her company Hacker House as a fellow director.
By Christmas that year she was pregnant and engaged to Hickey.
Her new business fared no better in terms of profits. Last July the couple relocated to an upmarket district of Orange County, California, even though their two companies, Innotech and Hacker House, now owed more than £1m between them.
However, Arcuri still kept her highly marketable reputation as a top technology entrepreneur that she had built through a mixture of her own tireless self-promotion, Johnson’s endorsement of her networking summits and her attendance alongside the mayor at high-level trade missions.
So in November last year Hacker House applied to the DCMS for a grant under a new initiative called the Cyber Skills Immediate Impact Fund, which is designed to train people in the UK to fend off cyber-attacks. Last January it was given a £100,000 grant.
According to a DCMS spokesman, the grant is for initiatives that are “based and operate” in Britain, and yet Hacker House had been based at Arcuri’s $1.2m (£960,000) new American home in Huntington Beach, southeast of Los Angeles, since June last year and remains there today.
The couple supplied their registered company address in Prestbury, Cheshire, on the application form for the government grant. When The Sunday Times visited the address last month, it turned out to be a property that Arcuri and her fiancé had rented before they left for America.
The owner confirmed that the property had no connection to Hacker House and the current tenant said he occasionally received mail for the company but sent it back to the post office marked “wrong address”.
By law, the company should keep all its registers available for inspection at the address or provide an alternative.
Arcuri also uses the rented home as her correspondence address, which is also an apparent breach of the Companies Act.
Furthermore, it emerged that Arcuri was again given preferential treatment when her company applied for the DCMS grant. Officials agreed to waive a rule that the company had to show the grant did not exceed 50% of its collective income because they felt it was a start-up that merited support.
The DCMS said this weekend it would investigate the circumstances surrounding the grant after being told by this newspaper that Arcuri had moved back to America before the application was made.
On Friday she issued a short statement in response to our article. It said: “Any grants received by my companies and any trade mission I joined were purely in respect of my role as a legitimate businesswoman . . . I am incredibly disappointed that The Sunday Times cannot write about a successful female entrepreneur without smearing her with innuendo based on leaks from City Hall.”
Downing Street refused to comment on the prime minister’s behalf yesterday.
Insight team: Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott
jonathan.calvert@sunday-times.co.uk
george.arbuthnott@sunday-times.co.uk
