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'I can't take much more of this': John Whittingdale faces mounting pressure to quit over fresh allegations by porn star lover... as his mystery blonde date is named as Kristina the Lithuanian glass-blower
- John Whittingdale has admitted he could be forced to quit his Cabinet role
- Minister is reeling over revelations surrounding his private and political life
- Survival hopes suffers new setback after allegations from former porn star
- Whittingdale also worried about link to pro-Kremlin oligarch Dmitry Firtash
PUBLISHED: 17:01 EST, 23 April 2016 | UPDATED: 16:50 EST, 24 April 2016
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Embattled John Whittingdale has admitted he could be forced to quit the Cabinet over revelations about his private and political life.
Reeling from claims about affairs with a dominatrix, a former porn star and two Eastern European women, and about his MPs’ expenses, the Culture, Media and Sport Secretary told a friend last week: ‘I can’t take much more of this.’
His hopes of survival suffered another setback last night with new allegations by former topless model and porn star Stephanie Hudson.
Ms Hudson – whose affair with Mr Whittingdale, which ended last year, was revealed in last week’s Mail on Sunday – says he told her:
- He secured his Belorussian student lover Natalia Lokhanova a £5,000-a-month job in Britain while he was in a relationship with her.
- He feared his links to controversial pro-Kremlin Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash – wanted in the US on corruption charges – could lead to claims he was ‘sponsored’ by him.
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Left, former porn star Stephanie Hudson has revealed new insights into her former lover, while questions remain over whether Whittingdale secured his young lover Natalia Lokhanova, right, a £5,000-a-month job
The claims increased the pressure on the Minister, a member of two secret Cabinet security committees, to explain his East European connections. Mr Whittingdale, 56, who is unmarried, had an affair with Ms Lokhanova, whose father is believed to have been a USSR military officer, from 2012 to 2013.
Whittingdale told friends that, when his affair with Lokhanova, more than 20 years his junior, ended, she returned to Moscow. Her Facebook page showed photos of her on exotic holidays from Turkey to Thailand.
Ms Hudson told the MoS: ‘John told me he got her [Natalia] a £5,000-a-month job with a wealthy businessman friend of his.’ She went on to say that Mr Whittingdale had said that because she came from such a poor background, she was grateful for the opportunity.
The MoS has been unable to contact Ms Lokhanova, whose whereabouts are not known.
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Ms Hudson said Whittingdale had also spoken of Firtash, a second-hand car dealer turned Ukrainian gas magnate who owns a mansion next door to Harrods in London. Ms Hudson said: ‘John said the papers would be all over him because he had accepted some money. He called it “sponsoring” him.’
Firtash’s critics in Ukraine claim he ‘owns’ Ukrainian politicians who support his interests. In 2014, he was arrested in Austria, accused of bribery and corruption by the FBI. However, an Austrian court refused to extradite him when he complained that the charges against him were politically motivated.
Firtash’s UK representative, businessman Robert Shetler-Jones, has given tens of thousands of pounds to the Conservative party, but denies it had anything to do with Firtash. Firtash bankrolls the British Ukraine Society, of which Whittingdale has been a director. The MP has declared nearly £10,000 worth of BUS-funded trips to Ukraine in the MPs’ register. He says they were to boost UK-Ukraine relations.
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The minister is said to be worried his links to controversial pro-Kremlin Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash – wanted in the US on corruption charges – could lead to claims he was ‘sponsored’ by him
He helped to organise a ‘Days of Ukraine’ event at the Commons, attended by Firtash’s wife, Lada, to celebrate her husband’s Dmitry Firtash Foundation charity.
According to a WikiLeaks document, Firtash reportedly had dealings with Russian gangster Semion Mogilevich, accused of racketeering, money-laundering and trafficking prostitutes – though Firtash denied it. In 2012, there were reports that plans to appoint Tory former diplomat Dame Pauline Neville-Jones as David Cameron’s National Security Adviser were blocked after her links to Firtash were disclosed by MI5. Her Lords office received £20,000 a year from Mr Shetler-Jones. Mr Shetler-Jones said he gave the money ‘in a personal capacity’.
Mr Whittingdale is a member of two of the Government’s National Security Council sub committees. He has a long-standing interest in Eastern Europe: he chaired the Commons all party groups on Ukraine and Russia and was a member of groups for Belarus, Georgia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova and Armenia.
His Essex constituency of Maldon was twinned with Brest, Belarus, in 2012. His lover Ms Lokhanova and the Belarus ambassador attended the launch in Maldon.
A spokeswoman for Mr Whittingdale said: ‘John has never received any money or any other financial benefits from Dmitry Firtash or his associates.’
Meanwhile, on Friday, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards launched a formal probe into a trip John Whittingdale made to Amsterdam with Ms Hudson. Mr Whittingdale failed to declare the two-night, expenses-paid trip visit to the MTV Awards on the register of MPs’ interests.
A source close to Mr Whittingdale said he did not need to because the trip’s cost did not meet a £660 threshold.
John Whittingdale's statement about the prostitute he dated
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Minister’s mystery date spotted at French embassy banquet named as model turned glass-maker from Lithuania
By Simon Walters and Stephanie Condron
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Kristina Bobs with Mr Whittingdale at a London Film Festival party in October
The identity of the mystery blonde who accompanied John Whittingdale to a French Embassy banquet last month was revealed last night.
She is Lithuanian model turned glass-maker Kristina Bobs, who has an English husband, Nigel Bobs, and lives in Leatherhead, Surrey.
Kristina was with Whittingdale at a French Embassy cultural celebration last month where he was very keen to have her seated at his side. The Cabinet Minister asked if Kristina could be moved to the top table to sit with him and guest of honour Prince Michael of Kent, but was told she would have to remain on an outer table.
The pair were also pictured at a London Film Festival party in October last year.
Asked about her relationship with Mr Whittingdale, Kristina said: ‘I have no comment.’ Mr Whittingdale also declined to comment.
Jetsetting Kristina, who describes herself as a ‘driven fun-lover who believes in taking risks’, runs a successful ‘hand-blown’ glassware company, Svaja, which sells traditional Baltic ‘luxury art glassware’. The name is derived from her middle name, Svajone, which means ‘dream’ in her native country.
Born Kristina Zvirblyte, she came to the UK, aged 25, when she studied Chemical Engineering at Leeds Beckett university, before switching to modelling.
She is 47, though it appears she once told an interviewer she was born in the 1970s, which would have taken several years off her real age. She married her husband Nigel 16 years ago and in 2005 he gave up his job as a car trader to go into business with her.
With his support, the glass-blowing business took off as Kristina added Arabic to the Lithuanian, English and Russian languages she speaks to help her boost sales on trips around the world.
According to the Electoral Roll, the couple, who have a 12-year-old daughter, live in a double-fronted detached home at Tattenham Corner on the edge of Epsom racecourse. On Friday, a white Mercedes with what appeared to be a personalised numberplate based on Kristina’s name was parked in the driveway. Neighbours said she lived there with her husband.
Kristina’s networking skills were in evidence when she and her husband were among those invited to a state banquet in Lithuania in honour of the Queen and Prince Philip. She also met Mr Whittingdale’s political heroine, Margaret Thatcher, before her death in 2013 and has described the former Prime Minister as ‘an iconic woman who made a huge global impact’.
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Top table: Cabinet member Mr Whittingdale (left) is pictured with Prince Michael of Kent (right) last month
Kristina has said: ‘It’s funny when I look back at how I arrived in the UK: a fresh faced young woman with no particular goals. Now I look at myself and realise how driven I am – to succeed in business, while having a happy balanced family life.
‘A journalist asked me “If you were to do it all again, would you choose beauty or brains?” and my answer is, “Intelligence is beautiful.”
‘My message to all women around the globe is: take risks, make your own rules and definitely have fun.’
Since 2013, she has also been the global ambassador for the Federal Association for the Advancement of Visible Minorities, a civil rights group. In 2011, the organisation’s founder, Raphael Louis, was jailed for three years for trying to cheat the Canadian tax system out of almost £5 million. There is no suggestion that Kristina was aware of any impropriety.
He’s raising eyebrows on the home front, too: Culture Secretary bills taxpayer for more than £66,000 in rent for Westminster flat barely half a mile from one he already owns
By Abul Taher and Glen Owen
John Whittingdale was last night accused of manipulating the MPs’ expenses system by claiming rent from Parliament for a London flat – despite already owning another taxpayer-funded property in the capital.
The Culture Secretary has billed the taxpayer for more than £66,000 in rent for a flat in Westminster barely half a mile from one which he already owns, on which he is pocketing about £20,000 a year in ‘buy-to-let’ income.
The Tory MP for Maldon, Essex, purchased his flat in London’s Victoria in 2008, when MPs with two homes were able to nominate one as their main residence. Under the system in place at the time, they could claim back from the taxpayer the cost of mortgage interest payments on their ‘second home’, plus bills for furnishings and utilities. In the same year, Mr Whittingdale also bought a four-bedroom house in his Maldon constituency for £355,000 without a mortgage. He then nominated this as his main home, allowing him to make claims on his London property.
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Whittingdale's made £80,000 from renting his flat in London (left) while he claims £20,000 a year for his flat half a mile away
Fury over the MPs expenses scandal in 2009 – when MPs were revealed to have played the system by ‘flipping’ the designations of their homes to maximise the amount of money they could pocket and claiming for spurious ‘expenses’ such as duck houses – forced a crackdown by the newly established watchdog, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.
In 2012, IPSA banned MPs from claiming back their mortgage interest bills from the taxpayer, but allowed them to continue to claim for rent. A number of MPs, including Mr Whittingdale, reacted by moving into the rented sector or taking hotel rooms.
Mr Whittingdale moved out of his flat in Victoria and into a rental property opposite Scotland Yard, on which he claimed rent of £1,700 a month. In 2014, he moved to a second rental property about a mile away in Vauxhall.
Although the mortgage-rent switch is within IPSA rules, the wheeze has been condemned as an abuse of taxpayers’ money. Mr Whittingdale declares on Westminster’s Register of Interests that he earns ‘more than £10,000 a year’ in rental income from his London home. But when it was last offered for rent, the property was marketed for £1,900 a month, suggesting that since 2012 he has earned more than £80,000 on a home on which the taxpayer paid the mortgage interest for four years.
Mr Whittingdale has also claimed more than £65,000 from the taxpayer to cover his rent bills between moving out in August 2012 and last October, when he stopped claiming.
Labour MP John Mann said: ‘This doesn’t look good, and it doesn’t help Mr Whittingdale’s cause. I congratulate Mr Whittingdale for terminating the rental claims.’
A spokeswoman for Mr Whittingdale said: ‘John has fully complied with the parliamentary rules, with all expenses claimed in accordance with these’.
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