Vlad’s ex-minister worth £230m ... and wife who’s given a fortune to the Tories
LUBOV Chernukhin is a longstanding Tory donor and the wife of former Russian deputy finance minister Vladimir Chernukhin.
She is believed to have given the Conservatives more than £903,000 in donations since 2012.
Mrs Chernukhin, 46, held a Russian passport before gaining British citizenship and settling in London. She and her husband have a £7million mansion overlooking Regent’s Park.
In 2014 she paid £160,000 in an auction at the Tory summer fundraising ball for the ‘ ultimate tennis match’ with former prime minister David Cameron and Boris Johnson.
But controversy over her husband’s past Kremlin links provoked an embarrassing backlash after Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine resulted in the shooting down of passenger jet MH17.
In June last year, the Tory party was accused of ‘sheer hypocrisy’ after it was revealed it had accepted £50,000 in donations from Mrs Chernukhin on the same day that Theresa May pointed the finger at Russia over the poisoning of spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.
Last year Mrs Chernukhin gave at least £389,500 to the Conservatives. At one point she bid £30,000 to have dinner with Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and tour Churchill’s War Rooms. It is unclear whether the event went ahead.
As a British citizen she is eligible to make donations to UK political parties.
But in 2012 Electoral Commission records show she was declared an ‘ impermissible donor’ when she attempted to give £10,000 to the Tories. This is thought to have been because she was not on the electoral roll at the time.
Mrs Chernukhin is believed to have married Mr Chernukhin in November 2007. He served as a minister in Vladimir Putin’s first presidency between 2000 and 2002. He then became chairman of Vnesheconombank, a stateowned investment bank.
However, he is said to have fallen out of favour with the Russian president for his loyalty to Mikhail Kasyanov, a critic of Mr Putin, and was dismissed from his role, leading the couple to settle in Britain.
Earlier this year it emerged that City financier Nat Rothschild created a £275,000-ayear job for Mr Chernukhin in 2004 to enable him to get a British visa.
Mr Chernukhin told a court that he fled Russia after being tipped off that he was to be arrested in a swoop on opponents of Mr Putin.
He said that once he had been in Britain for five years, and could obtain leave to remain in the UK, he repaid £1.3million to Mr Rothschild because the job had required no actual work.
Details of the arrangement emerged during a courtroom battle between Mr Chernukhin, 49, and the oligarch Oleg Deripaska, 51, over ownership of a textile factory on a valuable 22-acre site in central Moscow.
Although Mr Chernukhin was a state employee until 2004, the court heard he had amassed £230million at the time from his ‘real estate empire’. He was formerly in a 16-year relationship with Lolita Danilina, who was also dragged into the court battle, although he did not marry her.
Mrs Chernukhin was educated in the United States, studying at Merrimack College in Massachusetts from 1990 to 1995 and completing an MBA at the prestigious Stern School in New York between 1997 and 1999.
In documents filed with the UK’s Companies House, she has variously listed her occupation as banker, investment director and consultant.