How Bojo tried to wriggle out of inquiry into relationship with his blonde friend
BORIS Johnson’s lawyers have tried to get out of assisting an official inquiry into his links with American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri – by claiming it has no right to question him.
The Prime Minister’s law firm Atkins Thomson has written a letter to the chairman of the Greater London Authority (GLA) oversight committee Len Duvall after the body requested ‘extensive’ details of Mr Johnson’s relationship with the 34-year-old.
The letter adds: ‘It appears to us the GLA oversight committee may be exceeding their remit or overstepping the mark by requiring information of our client.’
It came as Miss Arcuri gave an exclusive interview to the Mail in which she referred to herself as ‘Boris’s Anne Boleyn’, describing how the second wife of Henry VIII had refused to ‘give him her virtue’. However she would not comment on whether she had an affair with Mr Johnson.
The GLA committee wrote to Mr Johnson over claims that as London mayor he ‘failed to declare a potential conflict of interest in relation to the awarding of public funds’ to Miss Arcuri.
And the body requested ‘details and a timeline of all contact with Jennifer Arcuri during your period of office as Mayor of London, including personal, social and professional.’
Mr Johnson this week responded by sending material to the committee – but marked it ‘private and confidential’ and ‘Not for publication’. Mr Duvall of the GLA committee has already written to him demanding to know why he marked the information as secret.
Mr Johnson has consistently denied any impropriety – but has singularly failed to deny having an affair with Miss Arcuri.
Miss Arcuri also says that any grants given to her firm were ‘above board’.
The letter from Mr Johnson’s lawyers, sent this week and leaked to the Huffington Post yesterday, said their client ‘intends to fully cooperate with the Director General of the Independent Office for Police Conduct in its separate inquiry into the PM’s links to Arcuri.’