Conservative MP David Warburton, 56, has been suspended by the British Parliament after being accused of sexual harassment by three women and appearing in several images with lines of cocaine.
Warburton once received a loan of 120,000 euros from a financier of Russian origin, Roman Joukoski, whom he invited to Westminster and maintained contacts with senior party officials, including the spokesman for the parliamentary group Jacob Rees-Mogg.
The
Warburton scandal
has erupted as the British security services issued an alert over attempts by "hostile foreign forces" to infiltrate the British parliamentary system, following the recent case of Chinese citizen Ching Kui Lee, who had access to deputies Conservatives and Labor despite their direct links to the Communist Party, MI5 revealed.
In the case of David Warbuton, it is suspected that the spread of compromising images that threaten to ultimately cost him his seat may be related to his relationship with
Russian broker Roman Joukovski, specialists in tax avoidance advice and "golden visas".
for great fortunes on British soil.
Warburton, married with two children, is not exactly a "heavyweight" within the 'tories', but his presence in the European Control Committee and his direct line with high levels of the party may have made him a political target.
On Sunday,
hours after the scandal broke, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital
.
Warburton apparently received a loan of 100,000 pounds at the hands of Joukovski in 2017. The 'tory' deputy for Somerton and Frome did not declare it in Parliament, despite the obligation to do so in 28 days if the loans are related to his political activity .
According to
The Daily Mail
, Joukovski had been declared "insolvent" and had been described by the British authorities as "person unfit to offer financial services" three years earlier.
Sources close to the deputy in trouble stated that the loan was repaid with interest
.
Even so, the leak of the images to the British media has fueled the suspicion that Warburton was the victim of a 'kompromat' (the disclosure of compromised information).
The director of MI5, Ken McCallum, warned in statements to the
that both China and Russia have tried to reach British deputies and their direct advisers:
"They always choose people close to power and likely to be influenced
. "
Three women have almost simultaneously accused Warburton of sexual harassment, and two cases are already being investigated by Parliament.
The third case is of a woman, much younger than him, who claims to have tried to dodge his advances in her own home and with whom he talks on audio about the "good buy" of two grams of cocaine for 160 pounds.
In the image that jumped to the front pages of the British media, Deputy Warburton can be seen leaning on a table and with several lines of coke, cut with a credit card, arranged on a tray.
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