Johnson’s office sent invoice to hedge fund manager, which was paid, weeks after meeting Venezuelan leader last year
Revealed: how Boris Johnson traded PM contacts for global business deals
From a private jet somewhere over the Caribbean Sea in February last year, Boris Johnson called his old political adversary David Cameron, then the foreign secretary, to notify him of a visit.
Johnson had taken a day out from a family holiday in the Dominican Republic for an unlikely meeting with the leftwing president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, a man whom Johnson, when in office, had likened to a “dictator of an evil regime”.
The other participant in the meeting was less well known: Maarten Petermann, a hedge fund manager.
When later questioned about the meeting, Johnson told UK government officials: “It is not true to say that I was paid for any meetings in Venezuela.” The former prime minister said he had no contractual relationship with the hedge fund Merlyn Advisors.
Johnson later suggested he had been acting as a diplomatic backchannel, but weeks after attending the 45-minute meeting, the Guardian can reveal, Johnson received £240,000 from Petermann.
The revelation is contained in the Boris Files, a leak of data from the office of Boris Johnson, his private office, which receives a taxpayer-funded allowance. The files contain a contract with Merlyn Advisors signed by Johnson months earlier in September 2023.
The contract, drawn up by Merlyn, notes that Johnson “over a long career has acquired a unique experience and knowledge of domestic UK government politics and international relations”.
It says Merlyn Advisors “interacts with a number of different domestic and international stakeholders which would benefit from the perspectives and the experiences of” Johnson. For each meeting, Johnson was to be paid a fee of £200,000 – worth up to £1.6m a year for eight meetings.
The contract was to last two years from October 2023. The company would also pay £35,000 a month to support a thinktank that Johnson was considering setting up in the UK.
Johnson did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Petermann said: “I have no comment. Please don’t try to put words in my mouth as to whether or not I dispute it.”
The Guardian has not confirmed whether the payment made to Johnson was for his visit to Venezuela.
The cache does not include a copy of the contract also signed by the company and it is possible it was abandoned after UK officials asked questions about the arrangement.
The invoice, for £200,000 plus an additional £40,000, was sent on 15 March 2024, weeks after the meeting with Maduro. This invoice was paid on 7 May, the document suggests. There are no details of other invoices to Merlyn.
The files were obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a US non-profit that archives data leaks. The Guardian is the first media outlet to publish stories based on the leak.
Johnson has said he was “extensively briefed” by the top UK diplomat in Caracas before the meeting and updated the embassy afterwards.
The Sunday Times has reported that Johnson did not tell Cameron about Petermann’s involvement in the meeting.
Cameron, who was embroiled in his own post-Downing Street scandal, might have warned Johnson of the perils of using the privileges of his role as a former PM for financial gain. As prime minister, Johnson had launched an official investigation into Cameron’s lobbying for Greensill Capital.
Johnson faced questions from UK government officials about the Venezuela meeting after a series of reports in early March last year from the Sunday Times and the Financial Times revealing Petermann’s involvement and Johnson’s relationship with the company. But details of the contract and an invoice sent to the company have not previously been reported.
The media reports drew the attention of officials at the Whitehall revolving-door watchdog responsible for monitoring the post-government careers of ex-ministers, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba).
They wrote to Johnson on 18 March 2024. What seemed confusing to the officials was that Johnson had made an application months earlier, in September 2023. What they had not known – and what is revealed in the leaked files – is that the contract prepared by the hedge fund had been signed by Johnson.
At the time, Johnson faced a potential difficulty: he had told Acoba that “no publicity or announcement whatsoever is planned in relation to this role”, but if approval was given by Acoba, his work for the hedge fund would be revealed to the public in a letter published by the watchdog.
Johnson now faces fresh questions about his candour with the watchdog. He told Acoba he had had no meetings with the hedge fund in his last two years in office.
In fact, Johnson had a meeting with Petermann when he was still in office, just over a week before the end of his time as prime minister, leaked documents show.
The leaked files reveal they met for a two-and-a-half-hour lunch at Chequers, Johnson’s grace-and-favour country house, on 28 August 2022. Petermann attended alongside a fellow trustee at an animal conservation charity that had hired Johnson’s soon-to-be wife, Carrie, more than a year earlier in January 2021.
The lunch with Petermann has not been previously reported and was never disclosed in official transparency registers. The secret lunch raises questions over whether Johnson used his final days as prime minister, and the luxuries of that office, to develop a relationship with a future business interest.
Fourteen months after the Chequers lunch, Johnson told Acoba officials in October 2023 that he had decided not to take up a role with the hedge fund. This came only days after he had signed the contract prepared by Merlyn Advisors. One possibility is that the contract was shelved at the 11th hour after Acoba’s inquiries.
For a fortnight in late March 2024, Acoba repeatedly sought clarification from Johnson about his role with the company. He repeatedly denied having a contractual relationship with the company or having been paid for any meetings in Venezuela. He refused to say in what capacity he had met Maduro, or to characterise his relationship with the company.
The then chair of Acoba, the Conservative peer Eric Pickles, would later characterise Johnson’s responses as “evasive” and lacking candour. Lord Pickles concluded there remained “a reasonable concern” Johnson was acting for the company in “a capacity that would be considered advisory work” and had breached the rules by failing to properly answer Acoba’s questions.
Just over a fortnight later, the £240,000 invoice would be marked by Johnson’s staff as paid.
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