Judge raised doubts over donor’s honesty

THE Conservatives might be happy to accept Lubov Chernukhin’s donations, but a High Court judge took the opposite view recently, urging ‘great caution’ before trusting her word.

In an excoriating ruling, Mr Justice Teare said the oligarch’s wife was ‘not being frank’ when she gave evidence in his courtroom.

Mrs Chernukhin spent a day in the witness box at London’s Royal Courts of Justice in a case involving her husband and another oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. But the judge was not impressed. In his ruling, handed down three months ago, he said: ‘Her answers were clear, but they sometimes contradicted the contemporaneous documents. The manner in which she gave her evidence did not suggest to me that it was safe to rely upon what she said was her recollection.

‘She was not being frank with the court. Great caution is required before accepting her evidence.’

The case involved a dispute between her husband, former Kremlin deputy finance minister Vladimir Chernukhin, and Russian mining magnate Mr Deripaska over the ownership of a factory.