Cummings ‘studied drinking & sex’ while in Russia, says his old boss

Smyslov, who recently opened a British “health” company called 100nuts Ltd and lives in Lithuania, described one incident when he and Cummings tried to impress potential investors.

He said: “We managed to reserve the bank’s oak-panelled boardroom for the meeting, and told the fund representatives that the whole building was ours.

“We invited around 10 friends, made them put on shirts and ties and to attend the meeting with the fund pretending they worked for us.

“They were very impressed with the group of uniformed men with machine guns – the bank’s security – at the entrance to the building.

“The meeting went well.

Dom played his part as the Oxford-educated expat very well. He even borrowed a tie for that occasion.”

Smyslov says Cummings “slept on the sofas of whoever would put him up, and put up with him”. They parted ways when Cummings demanded an equal share of the business. Smyslov said: “We looked down on him as a kid, who had a nice writing style, was good in philosophy discussions over a drink, but nothing more. “He wanted all, or at least equal, or nothing. In the end he got nothing.” Cummings’ next job in Russia was working at Samara Airlines for American businessman Adam Dixon.

Dixon, now living in Connecticut, told how on one occasion Cummings was entertained by a Samara Airlines executive and his colleague who aimed to obtain the secret passwords to the ticketing he controlled for the airline. Dixon said: “The man in question was almost twice Dominic’s size. Dominic drank him literally under the table – and walked away.”

That man was Sergey Samokhin, who remembers how Cummings then had a “Boris Johnson-like hairstyle” and was “lazy and unpleasant”.

He said: “This is precisely what he was. I saw Dominic Cummings a lot at work. He didn’t speak Russian.”

Cummings quit after barely a year and returned to the UK. Labour has raised questions with No10 over his time in Russia, from 1994 to 1997, asking about his “relationships with figures in Russian politics, intelligence and security”.

Veteran Moscow journalist John Helmer suggested in a blog that Cummings, who helped mastermind Brexit, could be a “sleeper agent” for Moscow.

But Smyslov said: “I would be extremely surprised if he were a spy.”

Dixon said: “I do not believe the suspicions – voiced by others – that Dominic was recruited by Russian intelligence while he worked for me. Dominic would have been a useless ‘asset’ at that time.”

Cummings was special adviser to then Education Secretary Michael Gove between 2010 and 2014 before his triumph in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

He refused to quit after his lockdown trip to Barnard Castle but is considering leaving No10 later this year once he has shaken up the civil service in Whitehall.

Downing Street did not respond to a request for comment.

SUSPICIONS Cummings