[ad_1]
Boris Johnson has a case to answer for failing to declare personal interests following allegations made by American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri, according to the chairman of an independent standards panel that reprimanded him as mayor for failing to declare an interest in one’s mother. of their children.
In 2010, the City Council panel recommended that Johnson and his staff receive training on the importance of declaring personal interests after he failed to acknowledge his extramarital affair with Helen Macintyre, an unpaid counselor who later became known to have given birth to his daughter. in 2008.
In 2012, Johnson began a four-year affair with Arcuri, he alleged in an interview with the Sunday Mirror this week. Arcuri benefited from thousands of pounds in public money, including from the mayor’s advocacy agency, London and Partners (L&P), and received coveted spots on trade missions to New York and Tel Aviv alongside Johnson, despite failing to deliver. with the criteria for those trips. .
Johnson’s interest register made no mention of Arcuri and insisted in 2019 that he had no interest to declare. On Monday, Johnson’s press secretary, Allegra Stratton, said he acted with “honesty and integrity” as mayor and had “no case to answer” about the Arcuri allegations.
But Claer Lloyd-Jones, a lawyer who chaired the 2010 panel on Johnson’s affair with Macintyre, said Johnson has questions to answer.
Speaking to The Guardian, she said: “Sounds so she [Arcuri] alleges that there was interest in testifying but no evidence has been presented. If you are going to continue saying that there is no interest to declare, someone has to make a decision about it. I would certainly like to know what you have to say about it. “
Johnson is expected to appear before the London assembly oversight committee when he resumes his investigation into the allegations later this year.
Last year, the Independent Office of Police Conduct said Johnson should not face a criminal investigation into allegations that he favored Arcuri. But he did criticize his inability to show interest in her.
He said his failure to ensure a “complete separation between himself and this decision-making” about Arcuri’s places on trade missions “could be construed as a violation of Nolan’s broader principles in the sense that he could see that Ms. Arcuri was getting an opportunity network through the mayor’s own business enterprise agency (L&P). ”
He added: “Mr. Johnson’s passive approach could be characterized as a violation of paragraph 5 of the Code of Conduct:” the mayor must not behave in a way that can reasonably be considered as a discredit of his office or authority. “
Lloyd-Jones said the Conservative government’s decision to eliminate standards committees in local government made it difficult to highlight potential code of conduct violations, including conflicts of interest.
She said, “We know there has been the previous [Macintyre] case, which I presided over and who ensured that I understood the code of conduct in one way or another ”.
She said: “If the standards committee still existed and if a complaint had been made that there was a violation of the code in relation to Jennifer Arcuri and Boris Johnson, he could not claim that he did not understand the code for a second time.”
