secrets of big donors to the conservative party. in this reporter says, we relied very much on the services of mr xy. who is mr xy? are the rules on political donations up to the job? come and have supper with the prime minister, come and have supper with the leader of the opposition.— the opposition. what is really important _ the opposition. what is really important is _ the opposition. what is really important is the _ the opposition. what is really important is the access - the opposition. what is really important is the access and i the opposition. what is really. important is the access and the influence. but that is what is always on sale, isn't it? it is the time _ always on sale, isn't it? it is the time of _ always on sale, isn't it? it is the time of year _ always on sale, isn't it? it is the time of year when - always on sale, isn't it? it is the time of year when political parties get together. but where their money comes from is not on the agenda. parties can take as much as they like so long as the donor is on the electoral roll or as a uk company doing business here. you would have thought that there should be some sort of obligation placed on them in law to enquire a little bit into where that a large sum of money comes from. in fact, there is nothing like that. nothing at all. we have been investigating political donors. first up is manometer mercy —— mohammed amerci. he is very well—connected. here he is talking about corruption. corruption is a very, very heinous crime. every stolen dollar robs the poor of an equal opportunity in life. you might have heard of mr amersi because he recently revealed he paid the meetings of prince charles. ~ ., paid the meetings of prince charles. ~ . , charles. we are interested in the money — charles. we are interested in the money he _ charles. we are interested in the money he has _ charles. we are interested in the money he has given - charles. we are interested in the money he has given to i charles. we are interested in. the money he has given to the conservative party. more than £500,000.— conservative party. more than £500,000. , ., £500,000. the campaign is over and the work _ £500,000. the campaign is over and the work begins. _ £500,000. the campaign is over and the work begins. thank- £500,000. the campaign is over and the work begins. thank you i and the work begins. thank you all very much. and the work begins. thank you all very much-— and the work begins. thank you all very much. £10,000 went to boris johnson's _ all very much. £10,000 went to boris johnson's leadership - borisjohnson�*s leadership campaign. his cash also bought him face time with leading conservatives. critics say this kind of access damages democracy.— kind of access damages democra . ~ . , , , democracy. what is completely fascinating under _ democracy. what is completely fascinating under boris - fascinating under boris johnson's conservative party is that if you give enough, you are having dinner with the prime minister. you meet the top chapter, the prime minister, orvarious top chapter, the prime minister, or various cabinet ministers, and you get access. it is crony capitalism, it is capitalism for the super rich. we've been looking at mohammed amersi's past and where his money comes from. well, some of that comes from this company in sweden, a company find almost $1 billion for bribery. the company employed mr amersi as a consultant. he earned big fees for helping them structure telecom deals in some notoriously corrupt countries. like uzbekistan. in 2007, telia worked with the daughter of the then president of uzbekistan. herfamily had a reputation for corruption. in order to gain access to the golden goose there was a gatekeeper and the gatekeeper was the eldest daughter of the president. she ran a racket in uzbekistan. organised crime racket. if you want to make a load of money you have to be a business partner. telia became her partner by giving shares to a shell company she secretly controlled. three years later telia bought most of the shares back for $220 million. the american authorities say this was a $220 million bribe. we have now obtained documents that show how mr amersi was involved in the deal. in one e—mail, the telia boss writes... and he is his invoice for his part in project uzbekistan. he got a success fee of $500,000 for his work. the problem that mr amersi faces is that he has received money for being in the middle of a structure between the swedish telecoms company and the shell company, in which the president of uzbekistan�*s daughter had a full role. mr amersi's lawyers said the offshore company had been vetted and approved by telia. its involvement did not raise any red flags to mr amersi. his only role was helping telia buy the shares back. telia has accepted responsibility for violating anti—corru ption laws. we have also seen evidence about how mr amersi was involved in other deals regarding telia. we have details of an internal report about a consultant referred to as mr xy who was paid more than $65 million by telia over six years. it says mr xy�*s services appear to have included arranging introductions to politically exposed persons, that is politicians and people linked to them. now a telia executive who was brought in to clean up the company has agreed to speak for the first time. in this report it says we relied very much on the services of mr xy, who is that? that is mohamed amersi. so that is him, mr xy? yes. that is important because some of the things in there are pretty shocking. he was paid in excess of $65 million. the amount was brought up, i believe, is a big red flag because the arts and the explanation to that was that is normal if you are paying an investment bank 7 the answer and the explanation. but amersi was not an investment bank so that was not really a good answer. mr amersi's payments included expenses for lavish corporate entertainment. they were usually between $100,000 and $200,000 per month. and they were not evidenced by copies of receipts. the internal report recommended telia's relationship with mr amersi be terminated. they are basically saying the way he behaved was unacceptable and they had to let him go? yes, because if i had not thought that i would not have thought that that was an agreement that should be terminated, and then there was a high level of risk with it. applause all this matters because mr amersi's cash has been funding the conservative party. they should give it back. i think if serious questions are being asked about the donor, they should give it back. the bottom line is they don't have to do and there is nothing in the law and the regulation of our system that compels them to do that. mr amersi's lawyers says he met senior political figures with telia great managers but only dealt with individuals who were not considered politically exposed persons by mainstream institutions 7 telia's managers. his fees and expenses were entirely in keeping with industry practice and that telia did not require regular sight of the receipts. they say it is entirely false to suggest his contract was terminated. it is important that people around him, that trust and listen to him, understand the whole context. of his career. and life. he has been involved in one of the biggest corruption that we have seen in seen in sweden in modern times. mr amersi is in the pandora papers. 12 million leaked documents that were obtained by the international consortium of investigative journalists from a secret source. they want this information to come to the attention of governments all over the world. more than 600 journalists have worked on the leak including panorama and the guardian newspaper in the uk. we checked who else in the pandora papers has been giving money to the uk's main political parties. it led to stories about other conservative party donors. what could be more english than this? this village in the oxford countryside with its church, its pub and its stately homes. but the residents of this house grew up a long way from here. the files show that this is the country estate of another tory donor. it belongs to lubov chernukhin and her husband vladimir. now we are going to tell you about mr chernukhin�*s money but before that we need to talk about his wife. lubov chernukhin has given almost £2 million to the conservatives. that has bought her time with three tory prime ministers, including borisjohnson. £2 million is a lot of money for the conservative party. almost nothing, i suspect, for lubov chernukhin. i have enormous respect for tory members. i wonder what they think of all of this, that there is a group of incredibly rich people who are paying astronomical sums of money to get very privileged access at the highest level. to the prime minister and to ministers. so, where do mrs chernukhin�*s donations to the conservative party come from? our documents tell us mrs chernukhin�*s wealth comes from mr chernukhin. one e—mail describes her as financially supported by her husband. another as a housewife. and this document shows mr chernukhin�*s offshore company loaned £4 million to accompany owned by his wife in the uk. it looks like cash that's gone to the conservative party originally came from mr chernukhin. i would start to ask myself why he is not identified as a donor. if its joint to money, if its family money, why isn't he willing to have his name alongside hers in the quarterly return to the electoral commission, publicly identified as a donor and the source of the money? why? the chernukhins�* lawyer said mrs chernukhin is a british citizen and is entitled to do as she wishes with her money. but what about the money itself? vladimir chernukhin came to london in 2004 after falling after falling out of favour with president putin. he made a fortune in russia before he met his wife. vladimir chernukhin was a deputy finance minister in the yeltsin era. and then in 2000 when putin first came to the presidency he became head of one of russia's biggest state banks. we found evidence that suggests mr chernukhin abused his position at the state bank to make money for himself. it's based on something he said in court here in the uk in 2018. we've got hold of a transcript. it's from a vicious legal dispute over a russian property development. in it, mr chernukhin is surprisingly open about how he went about his business and how he got what he wanted. mr chernukhin had a secret personal interest in this multi—million pound development in moscow. in the courthouse he described how he came to an arrangement with the then mayor of moscow yuri luzhkov. the mayor would give him planning permission, and in return mr chernukhin would use the bank's powers to help enrich the mare's family. this is what mr chernukhin said in court. it looks like a corrupt deal. the chernukhins�* lawyers said our interpretation of the court evidence was a gross mischaracterisation. and "the suggestion that he acted improperly whilst an official of the state is wholly untrue." in a corrupt manner." our expert doesn't agree. that's a conflict. there's no two ways about it. here is a man who's chairman of a bank using the bank as a means by which he enhances his own personal wealth. that has corruption written all over it. so, why might someone give large sums of money to a political party? could they be trying to buy influence? we've been looking into the background of a russian businessman behind the controversial project near portsmouth. france is 100 miles across the channel. now, later this month, the uk government will decide whether or not to approve an ambitious plan to link the two with an underwater energy and communication cable. it is a £1.2 billion project. but not everyone around here likes it. i'm very worried about the environmental impact, i'm worried about the environmental impact on the inner city nature reserve we have. ——on the only inner city nature reserve we have. but that is not the only controversy. the company behind the proposed undersea cable is called aquind. since the project began in 2015, the business has given £700,000 to the conservative party. lord callanan served as a director of aquind before he became the minister for corporate responsibility. tory peer lord wharton was an adviser to the firm. some of the business's donations went to sa conservative mps. the reason this matters is that aquind wants to lay a power cable under the channel. you have to ask yourself why in those circumstances aquind feels it needs to go to such elaborate efforts and spend such money and so much time to get access to the conservative party. i'm worried about cronyism. i'm worried about sleaze. and they're all there in this project, in my view. aquind couldn't have a more well—connected public face. alexander tomoko started his career in the russian arms industry and is now a british citizen, tory activist and a close friend of borisjohnson. he likes to call borisjohnson by his realfirst name, alexander, or by the russian diminutive of that, sasha, they call each other sasha. he's told me about how he's spent time drinking champagne with mrjohnson on his balcony in westminster in the houses of parliament. mr temerko has also personally donated more than £700,000 to the conservative party. lawyers representing mr temerko, and aquind, said the donations were entirely lawful, properly declared, and have not been made in return for any special treatment. they said the environment has been fully considered during the planning process. but it is another russian businessman who owns aquind. viktor fedotov stays away from spotlight. but his secrets are in the files. voiceover: the total length of our trunk pipelines - is over 68,000 kilometres. they reveal he made a fortune from a project that was mired in allegations of corruption. an oil pipeline in eastern siberia. vmcsovsk: transneft - is the world's largest pipeline company, one of the most important infrastructure systems in russia. the pipeline was built by transneft, a company owned by the russian state. in 2008, an audit report suggested the company had lost huge sums to corruption. transneft was paying unnecessary intermediaries, tens of millions of dollars, for services that these intermediaries couldn't provide. so in our calculation, $4 billion was stolen or misappropriated. our documents reveal how mr fedotov and two macro transneft managers secretly owned one of transneft�*s and it's alleged the contractor was paid for doing work that was actually done by transneft itself. the profits were funnelled through a series of offshore companies before ending up in three trusts. two were controlled by the transneft managers, the third by mr viktor fedotov. it looks like they use their secret trusts to siphon off more than $100 million of transneft�*s money. if people are able to construct a scheme whereby they can extract for doing nothing $100 million plus out of government funds, then the real loser are the men, women and children who rely on the government to give them education, health, roads, social services. lawyers for aquind said there was no evidence that funds were embezzled from transneft. they say official investigations refuted the findings of the original audit. mr fedotov denies any allegations of wrongdoing and says he has never had any interest in british politics and has operated in an open and transparent manner throughout the course of his career. we think some of mr fedotov�*s money from transneft has ended up here in the uk. by 2007, mr fedotov had been granted british citizenship and he was living in this £7 million house in the english countryside. we think money from transneft helped pay for it. his cash has also funded aquind and its cross—channel cable project. the decision on mr fedotov�*s project will be made by the business secretary in days. the conservative party said donations are properly and transparently declared, and compliance checks are made in line with legislation enacted by the last labour government. it said fundraising is a legitimate part of the democratic process. government policy is in no way influenced by donations. and the party is motivated by the priorities of the british public, acting in the national interest. the main political parties, including labour and the liberal democrats, have all faced calls to hand donations back. the question is, if you are a political party in government, why aren't you recognising the risk that there's a connection between the money you are receiving and the person who is giving that money? why do you think they are not? it's in their interests not to look too hard and it's lucrative to not look hard if you're good at raising the money. the pandora papers have helped expose the murky world of political donations. britain is living through a moment of acute political crisis at the moment. democracy is threatened in all kinds of different ways and fair dealing in government. but i think the gravest threat at the moment is the purchase of our political system by the super—rich. trust and transparency are vital in our politics. but how can we trust political donations if we don't know where the money is really coming from? you can catch up with the first part of the panorama hello again. hello, and welcome to bbc news. i'm ben boulos. our top stories: united states national security advisor urges action not with what the energy crisis causing a shortage of gas across europe. we have long been concerned about russia using energy as a tool of coercion and a political weapon. we've seen it happen before and we see it happen again. us senators agree to extend the country's ceiling for two months, avoiding a possible default on the country's national debt. the un secretary general called vaccine in equity immoral and stupid and calls for a 40% of people in all countries to be vaccinated by the end of the year. newcastle united fans celebrate a takeover by a

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