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    Guardian: Jennifer Arcuri got visa from scheme run by former Johnson official Archived Message

    Posted by Sinister Burt on October 1, 2019, 6:57 pm

    Whatever anyone thinks about 'squeezegate', it seems obvious that a lot of the media are happier to focus on it rather than the actual corruption seemingly involved in arcuri-gate. Johnson is happy to deny the unprovable squeeze repeatedly, whereas he slithers around and vacillates on any mention of arcuri - this is where the media should be pushing, but they seem to be taking their time with it for some reason (threat of corbyn making them hold back? or just a general reticence of letting too much of our system's normal corruption show? (or it's just not as attractive to them as a knee-touching sort of story)).

    I listened to some tory the other day dismissing the idea that there was any connection betweern the mayor's office at the time and the department that favoured arcuri - i shouted at the telly 'yeah right, he's probably got an old bullingdon/eton mate there' - then i saw this article:

    https://www.dumptheguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/01/revealed-jennifer-arcuri-got-visa-from-scheme-run-by-former-johnson-official

    "A Whitehall official who ran the scheme that granted Jennifer Arcuri a coveted entrepreneur visa had worked for Boris Johnson when he was mayor, the Guardian has learned.

    The US businesswoman, who is at the centre of a conflict of interest row over her friendship with the prime minister, beat nearly 2,000 applicants to gain one of 200 sought-after tier 1 entrepreneur visas on the government’s Sirius programme after Johnson helped promote her firm, Innotech, by giving keynote speeches at her events.

    The Guardian has learned that Paola Cuneo, the then director of the Sirius programme, previously spent two-and-a-half years working in a senior post at London & Partners (L&P), the official mayoral promotional agency which Johnson had responsibility for while he was in City Hall.

    Cuneo, Arcuri and Johnson attended the same Innotech event in October 2013, two months before the company joined the Sirius scheme.

    A whistleblower told the Guardian: “Innotech stood out compared to other startups in the programme, which had a much higher potential to scale up … I could not understand why we were giving so much attention and extra funds to Innotech.”

    Ten days after the news of Johnson’s relationship with Arcuri first broke, the new disclosures will intensify speculation over a possible conflict of interest and raise fresh questions for the prime minister over whether he played an improper role in securing government support for his friend. Johnson has insisted that “everything was done with full propriety” but repeatedly refused to go into detail on what help, if any, he gave to Arcuri.

    On Tuesday Johnson refused three times to deny outright that he had an affair with Arcuri in an interview with Sky News. When pressed on whether he was denying an affair, he said: “The crucial thing is that in terms of promoting London, everything was done with complete propriety.”

    ..." Ctd.

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